


Mirror, Mirror

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [4]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: "Through A Glass Darkly", Anger Management, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humour, Anxiety, Consent, Cunnilingus, Declarations Of Love, Dirty Talk, Duelling, Enthusiastic Consent, Episode Related, Exes, Explicit Consent, Extended Scene, F/F, F/M, Fellatio, Fingering, Flashbacks, Frottage, G-Spot, Game Theory, Love, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Orgasm, Panic Attacks, Penis In Vagina Sex, Porn With Plot, Reconciliation, Revenge, Rimming, Secret Relationship, Self-Sacrifice, Semi-Public Sex, So much angst, Sparring, Spoilers for Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy: Born to Endless Night, Storytelling, Teasing, Vaginal Fingering, ménage à trois, relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:55:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Loose threads are tied and others started; an interweaving of perspectives before, during and after the episode “Through A Glass Darkly” and carrying on from the storyline created in previous works of this series.Hopefully it’s clear from the tags but… expect angst.





	1. Dual

“I’m sure,” he says, between clenched teeth, “you can do better than that.”

“I’m,” a grunt, “ _trying_.”

“Try… unh… _harder_.”

Sweat is pouring down both of them now. Their lips are drawn back from their teeth, they’re gasping, and their muscles ache, even as they drive them to perform that little longer, that inch further. Their feet shift for purchase. Not long now.

“It’s… like, _ah!_ you’ve forgotten everything.”

“I… _come on!_ remember it _all_.”

They break apart and pant. Athos props his hands on his knees.

“Come on then.” D’Artagnan starts dancing foot to foot.

Athos holds up a finger like _give me one minute_.

“Oh, no, I remember that one, that’s not going to work.” He shuffles again. “Come on, old man.”

Athos glares. D’Artagnan straightens and slowly, one might even say provocatively, peels his shirt off.

“Oh, you’re kidding me…”

“Come on!”

“I see,” says Athos. “All right.” And he straightens, slowly, one eyebrow raised, mouth a slash. Then he’s accelerating towards d’Artagnan, who flings out his blade, as if hoping Athos will run himself onto it, but Athos, with a _really?_ eyebrow, turns the dodge into a spin that he uses to drive the momentum that propels the edge of his blade across d’Artagnan’s unprotected ribs.

“Ow.”

“Again.”

“Ow.”

“It’s only a practice blade.”

“ _Ow…_ ”

“What, you want to wait a moment, _boy_ , get your breath back?”

“I’ve told you before: don’t call me _boy_.”

“Maybe I forgot.”

“Oh, maybe you forgot.”

Athos, shaking his head slightly at the paucity of this comeback, holds his blade low, eyes hooded slightly, fixed on d’Artagnan’s face. D’Artagnan stamps forward abruptly and he just sneers. D’Artagnan starts to circle and he stays in place until d’Artagnan places himself in the path of the sun and curses back around.

Athos smiles slightly.

D’Artagnan comes at him hard and fast, swinging from the shoulder. Athos gives ground hurriedly, then flicks his blade around d’Artagnan’s to deflect it. The blade slides away, and, as his eyes follow it, d’Artagnan’s fist comes into the side of his head.

He staggers. “Ow.”

“Again.”

“ _Ow…_ ”

“It’s only a practice fist.”

“I’ll give you a practice fist…”

D’Artagnan leans close. “Is that a promise?”

“Ohhh.” He tears off his doublet, hurls it behind him, and stares at his opponent.

“Oh, there he is.”

Athos mops his brow on his sleeve and beckons. _Come on._

D’Artagnan starts the wide circle again, arms cocked and ready. Athos crouches low, focused and feral-looking. His nostrils flare a couple of times. D’Artagnan flicks his eyebrows. Athos gives a slight nod and they’re moving in together, weaving and looking for an advantage. Athos has a grim sort of smile on his face as they close, d’Artagnan whirling fast to give himself a baffling momentum, Athos leaning back to avoid his own trick, and now their eyes pass, lock, pass, lock, blades catching sun, heads tossing, feet shuffling in the dance, pass, lock, pass, lock, heat rising, pass, lock, and soon

“Stop posturing and finish him off, will ya?!”

They stop, stare at each other, and if anyone sees that they’re looking at each others’ mouths and necks more than their eyes or hands, no-one says anything. Sweating and trembling? Well, it’s a hot day, they’ve been exerting themselves.

“Fuck off, Porthos!” tosses d’Artagnan.

“Nope!”

“Who’re you betting on?” calls Athos. Neither man has broken gaze towards their onlooker.

“What’s that?”

“Who’s the bet on?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“Arsehole,” mutters d’Artagnan.

“Hmm,” says Athos.

They are still standing very close, and if tongues wet lips, well? It’s a dry day, they’ve been panting in the afternoon sun for what seems like a long time.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” murmurs d’Artagnan.

“Often,” says Athos. “This time?” He makes a tiny, sideways nod. D’Artagnan nods, even more minutely, back at him.

Athos mouths: “Three, two, one…”

Porthos goes down under two practice blades and two pairs of sweaty arms, howling.

*  *  *

In the flower garden, the Queen and her Confidante are taking a turn in the afternoon sun. Constance holds a large parasol to shade them.

“All I’m saying is,” she says, “if you want to go riding, why do you need anyone’s permission?”

The Queen lets a brief look of fond exasperation cross her, then says, earnestly: “It’s not as simple as that.”

“You’re the Queen.”

“I wonder how much that counts for, sometimes.”

Constance’s face screws up to one side. “I hate it when you talk like that.”

“Sorry, Constance.”

Constance lays a quick hand on the Queen’s arm and says “That’s not…” The Queen’s hand finds hers and her voice fades into silence, focusing on the sensation of a smooth, soft thumb sliding across hers as they rustle and crunch together softly over the gravel.

The parasol, not designed to be carried one-handed by a distracted woman, tilts. “Oooops…” She grapples it upright again, and shade is restored.

“We could have had a servant carry that.”

“That would rather be beside the point…”

“Hmm.”

They go on, in silence.

“Take this trip,” says Constance.

“Trip?”

“This astro… this eclipse trip tomorrow. You could ride to that.”

“The King will not be riding.”

“But he could.”

“But he won’t. The baby will be coming too, of course.”

Constance frowns. “Of course.”

“And you.”

“And me. And the Governess, and various nobility.”

“None of whom will wish to ride.”

“I _could_.”

“But your pretty costume…”

Constance gives her mistress a wry look. “Who am I supposed to be again?”

“Libra.”

“Libra.”

“Don’t pout.”

“I’m _not_ pouting. Ooh.”

“Ah, but I like it when you pout.”

“Then why did you tell me t…”

“Because I like it very well.”

“Oh.”

“Why, Constance, are you blushing?”

“It’s a very warm day, your Majesty.”

“True,” she says, with a twinkle.

“Very warm indeed.”

“Oh…”

They walk on in silence again, but a touch faster.

“I’ve noticed,” says the Queen in a thoughtful kind of voice, “that your game has changed somewhat lately.”

“Am I getting harder to beat?”

“You know very well that I’m finding it ever more difficult not to succumb to you.”

“I see.”

“To what would you ascribe this shift?”

“Well, your Majesty, I recently decided to forgo the rule book and ‘play by hand’, as they say.”

“Indeed?”

“I could demonstrate to you, if you wished?”

“I could think of nothing sweeter.”

“You are due to meet that dowager of Riems and her daughter in the next half-hour.”

“Really?”

Constance nods, gravely.

“You know, this sun is awfully bright.”

“And warm, your Majesty.”

“Hmm.”

*  *  *

“Wh-wha… what if someone comes…?”

“That’s rather the, unh, point.”

A whimper. “I mean someone else.”

“Ugh, fuck, let ’em.”

“You’ve changed your, oh, oh Jesu, _yes_ , your tune.”

“Shall I stop?”

“Don’t you… oh, fuck, fucking _dare_.”

Athos has pressed d’Artagnan into the wall at the back of an empty stall. Around them dust and straw spiral in the long light slanting through the high stable window. His hand is working hard on his cock and he leans in now to mouth the long, bronze neck. He has d’Artagnan’s right hand pinned against the wall and is, almost involuntarily, grinding his own, still-clothed groin into the other man’s thigh.

D’Artagnan has not regained his shirt.

Athos, bending, licks his way slantwise down his chest and battens on his right nipple. D’Artagnan groans and rolls his head against the wall of the stables. He grows harder under Athos’s hand, and Athos, feeling this, changes the rhythm so that he is now taking almost brutally hard, long strokes down his shaft.

The door to the stables creaks, and d’Artagnan bites his lower lip hard, his hips still rocking into Athos’s fist. Athos turns his head on a tense neck, but his hand keeps working.

Maybe nothing…

The whistling starts. A simple tune that freezes them both as it comes closer. Athos looks up at d’Artagnan, who mouths “shit”. Athos nods, straightens cautiously, lifting his hand off d’Artagnan, whose eyebrows go up in the middle. Athos widens his eyes and raises his own eyebrows with a shrug. Then he grins and licks along his palm, closing his eyes in pleasure, putting the thumb edge of his hand into his mouth to suck it clean.

He cracks an eye open at d’Artagnan, who is still biting his lip, but is now shaking his head slowly. Athos makes a “What?” face. D’Artagnan narrows his eyes. Athos gives his hand a very long, ostentatious lick, then points down. Mouth pinching sideways, d’Artagnan busies himself with tucking and tying.

The whistler sniffs, coughs, and a stall door creaks open. “Come on then, boy,” he says. A slow clop to the centre of the floor, where leather and metal creak and rattle, hooves tap and shift, as saddle and bridle are laid on and tightened, and the groom keeps up a litany of soft, loving abuse: “Come on then, you balky bastard,” he croons. “That’s it, you quim-whiskered spigot hole. What a good little git. There’s a boy. Off we go, ya gimcrack.”

The slow walk clops down the stable, the door creaks, the listeners exhale, and d’Artagnan trips Athos to land on his back in a pile of straw.

He sits astride his hips and starts to pull his shirt out of his breeches. “Such a warm day,” he sighs, “shame to overheat.”

“You’re in a lot of trouble.” Athos writhes.

“Not as much as you.” He grins, and grinds lightly on Athos, who is failing to help get his shirt off.

Arms finally free, Athos reaches to d’Artagnan’s points and starts to undo them. D’Artagnan pinches Athos’s nipples _just_ to the point of discomfort and rolls them between his fingers. Athos presses his thumbs up the growing bulge in d’Artagnan’s breeches and feels his gyrations increase speed, watches his head go back, hears the edge of a moan curving in the back of his throat.

D’Artagnan dips suddenly and kisses Athos deeply. They roll to one side and continue to kiss, hands in each other’s hair, one of d’Artagnan’s legs flush with the Athos’s, the other still hooked around his hip.

Athos pushes d’Artagnan to his back, breaks off the kiss to say: “Please. I want to bring you. I want to hear you moan.”

“Oh, God. God, _yes_.”

He kisses his way down his lover’s body, and peels him free of his breeches, then lays kisses down his shaft to his balls. D’Artagnan whimpers. He licks back up the length of it, then engulfs the head with his mouth.

He can never get enough of this taste - salt and musk and all d’Artagnan. He swirls his tongue and slowly pushes his way down as far as he can go, covering the rest of the shaft with his hand. He grips, pulls, and starts up a rhythm with his hand and mouth, winding ripples of his tongue around him. He feels d’Artagnan tense and swell in that way he’s come to know so well, speeds up, feels d’Artagnan thrust hard now, abandoned, and he lays his free hand on the other’s stomach, feels it grasped, gripped, ground as d’Artagnan arcs and spends himself in a spill of sobbing cries.

_Tell him. Tell him now._

I can’t.

*  *  *

There’s a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

A sliver of the Bonacieux female’s face appears between the door and the jam.

“I’m here to see the Queen.”

“My apologies - the Queen is indisposed.”

“I merely wish,” and he adds weight to his leaning hand. Constance’s face screws up briefly. The door sticks, “to ensure her wellbeing.”

“My Lord,” she pants, “I cannot allow you in - the Queen is in bed with a bad headache and will not see anyone. The heat and…” she makes a tiny grunt of effort, “brightness were too much for her.”

“She should not have walked in the garden today.”

“We, uh, nngh, we took a parasol, my Lord, but there is no forestalling such a thing, if it wants to come.”

“The Queen is frail.”

A look crosses her face almost to quickly for him to see. He frowns. She looks… irritated? No. She only looks desperately concerned for her mistress. He shakes his head a little.

“I will tell her Majesty of your concern, my Lord. It will be as great a comfort to her as ever.”

A faint sound from the other side of the door.

Her face moves quickly to one side and she says breathlessly as she returns to centre: “My mistress calls me, my Lord.”

“What can _you_ do?”

“I will put c- _cold_ compresses on her head and r-read quietly to her, my Lord. We have pulled the shutters across the windows in the bedroom, as the doctor has recommended in the past.”

“Won’t that make the room stuffy?”

There. Definite irritation! Or something. Gone. Her eyebrows go up in the middle.

“My Lord, the window in this room remains open, and it is the lllight that hurts the Q-Queen most of all when she is like this.”

“I understand.”

“My Lord, p-please, pray for her M-Majesty.”

“Of course.”

“I thank you for your care.”

“Of course,” he murmurs.

“Good-goodbye!” The door closes. Curious - he’s never heard her stutter before. Shaking his head over the weakness of women, he strides off.

As Rochefort departs, they wait, ears stretched.

“That was interesting,” remarks Anne.

Constance stares down at her with wide eyes, shaking her head gently.

“What?” Anne’s look of innocence is marred by the fact that her hair is somewhat disarranged and she is gently shaking with laughter.

Constance reaches down and hauls her to her feet. “Her Majesty is clearly deranged by the heat and needs to go to bed.”

“Oh, is she now?”

Constance is fighting a smirk of her own as she says, as sternly as possible: “I wonder if she is fighting me not to go to bed.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to go…”

“She will if she knows what’s good for her.”

Anne’s face darkens, expression blurring with desire. Constance draws close, puts one arm about her waist, reaches up to put her disordered hair back a little from her face, tuts. “However did you get in such a mess, my love?”

“I can’t quite work out if it was putting my head under or withdrawing it from your skirts.”

“Hmm.” Constance’s eyes lose a little focus. “We’d have been in quite the pickle if he’d been able to push his way in.”

“Let’s… leave the Comte outside this room for now.”

“Let’s.” She leans forward, presses her lips softly to Anne’s. Anne opens her mouth, and their kiss deepens rapidly. Constance feels Anne’s fingers questing along the line of her bodice where it meets her breasts and moans when they find sensitive flesh, pinch gently and roll. She gasps, head back.

“Let’s get you out of that.” Anne’s voice is smoky.

“A-agreed.”

They rapidly unhook each other from every garment, tug, giggling quietly, at recalcitrant hose, and fall into the bed, the giggles fading into groans; the creak of the bedframe; gasps; the frantic, quickening slide of fabric and flesh.

Constance has the two middle fingers of her right hand buried deep in Anne. She is making the beckoning gesture with the tips that she has been wont to use on herself, and has just hit the right place in Anne to make her throw her head back and clutch the sheets frantically.

She has wanted to try this for a while. She lowers her mouth to Anne, licking at her tender flesh, in rhythm with her fingers. Anne’s heels start to dig into the bed and her hips pump hard and fast. Constance smiles and starts to move her fingers, lightly crooked, in and out, increasing the speed as Anne gasps and, as her lover’s movements even out into a hard, slow grinding, she slows her own rhythm and increases the pressure, all-but slamming into her, feels everything flutter and swell then, as Anne cries her name again and again, her cunny contracts hard around her and her body arcs, then collapses in a panting heap.

She lays a kiss on her belly and lays her head on it gently, feeling Anne’s hands flail to stroke her hair, waiting until her fingers are released.

They have all the time in the world.

For now.


	2. Luna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny for a kiss?

“Mmmmh…”

“Hello!” Constance’s voice was bright.

“Ohhh. Did I sleep…?”

“Yes.” Anne looked up. Constance was dressed and sitting by the bedside with a book in her lap.

“How long?” Her voice was still sticky.

“Not long - maybe an hour or so?”

“Oh, Constance…”

“My mistress needs her rest, remember?”

“Oh, but…?”

“Do you feel better?”

“I feel _incredibly_ relaxed…”

“There you go then.” She smirked lightly. “Old-fashioned remedies are often the best…”

“I’ll take you over the doctor a-aa-any day,” she yawned.

“Now there’s an image.”

“Constance!”

“My apologies, Your Majesty. I suppose I owe a forfeit for that…?”

Her eyes darkened and her mouth quirked. “Well now…” she said, softly, biting her lip.

Constance put her book to one side. Anne pulled herself up among the pillows and looked at Constance with her head on one side. “Will you come here and kiss me, please?”

“Of course.”

Constance knows that this is important to her, this checking that they are Anne and Constance, just Anne and Constance.

Apart from when they are Constance and André which… she shook her head. _No good will come of that thought_ , she told herself. Except…

_No._

She sat sideways on the bed, leant, and kissed her softly. Anne smelled of sleep and sex, warm and wanton. She put both hands to either side of her jaw, thumbs stroking her cheeks, bussed noses with her and smiled. Anne smiled back, grabbed her by the waist, and pulled her down across her lap.

Constance landed with an _oof_ , tried to rise, to find she was pinned by one hand on her chest while the other was slowly exploring under her skirts, higher and higher.

“Oh!” was all the Constance could think to say. Her mind was flailing in several directions, one of which was that she had never been aware of Anne being this strong before, and then those fingers found the edge of her, and yes - it had been a very warm day, after all.

“It occurs to me,” said Anne, idly stroking Constance, “that I never got to finish what I started earlier.”

“Earli… oh.” She felt a blush ascending. “Well, yes, that’s true…”

“But you still owe a forfeit…”

Constance’s mouth quirked mischievously. “I do have a secret to tell, as it happens.”

“Oh?”

Constance turned her head further towards her, affected a conspiratorial mien, and murmured: “The Queen snores…”

“Oh! She does not!”

“Adorably, but it’s true…”

“I don’t believe it!”

“We could get witnesses in…”

“Hmm,” said Anne, with an exaggeratedly thoughtful look on her face, fingers stilling. “Maybe it’s too late for what I had in mind after all.”

“Oh, now that’s…”

“I, too,” she said, louder, “know a secret.”

“What’s,” she gasped as one of Anne’s fingers slipped deeper. “Oh. Oh God.”

“You were saying?”

“Oh, what’s, uh, that?”

“What’s _what_?” Deeper again.

“Mmmmmh,” her head went back, “uh,” she blew out a couple of swift, huffing breaths, “what’s your _ah_ , your secret?”

“It’s that Madame Bonacieux _longs_ for me to bring her.”

“Oh, d-does she now?”

“Now, at night, in the morning…”

Constance grinned for the sheer glorious effrontery of it, then gasped again at an unseen movement. Anne gathered her close and kissed her, then set to work, swiftly unhooking and loosening the stays that kept Constance’s clothes in place.

“Come,” she said, “I want to feel your weight on me, see you above me.”

Wide-eyed, Constance clambered to kneel astride her, but Anne slipped down the bed so that her face was under Constance. She reached up and pulled her down so that her mound rested on her mouth, and then she started to kiss her.

Within moments Constance was gasping again, her hips rocking gently. Anne moaned beneath her, sending a vibration through her that echoed in her own throat. That hunger for her always travelled straight to her core, that naked need doing more than a thousand well-turned compliments could do.

Anne’s hands pulled her forward and her thighs started trembling at the effort. She felt thumbs pulling her open and Anne’s tongue drove deeper into her for a glorious, curling time while she strove to stay still. Then Anne moved to tongue her nub again and she fell forward, catching herself with an outstretched arm on the wall, rocking and rocking, free hand stuffed into her mouth for a gag as she rode the moaning caresses beneath her, Anne’s hands on her breasts, until all thought stopped on a muffled scream, a burst of final sensation like an explosion of white light.

“-stance? Constance…”

She opened her eyes; Anne was half-dressed and smiling. “You need to get up now, beloved.”

“Oh,” she said, slowly. “Damn.” She thought for a moment. “You need, um.” She shook her head rapidly. “You need help?”

“Yes please.”

“Fancy, fancy close.”

“Yes.”

She rubbed her face hard. “I’m up.” _First, my own clothes._

Dressing a Queen was something she’d only aspired to in the wilder imaginings of her youth when she started dressmaking. _Undressing her was a more recent ambition._

Shut up.

“There,” she said. “That’s everything. Shall I send Sofia in for your hair?”

“Not yet, I have a little while.”

Constance started to tidy together the strewn elements of the Queen’s day wear, sorting it automatically into colours and types. She placed them in a convenient place for taking to their correct storage later, and fetched the comb, brushes, and jewelled pins that would best complement her evening dress, laying them out in a practical order, left to right.

“Constance, please come here.”

“Of course. Would you like me to comb your hair?”

“No, I just… please sit with me?”

“Of course.” She pulled a chair up to where the Queen sat. She offered a small smile, tutting and reaching forward. “Sofia will scold me for the way that collar is sitting, let me…”

“It’s fine. Please just…”

“Are… Anne, are you _nervous?_ ”

“A little.” She looked into Constance’s eyes, then, as if searching for something, then let hers slide away.

Constance followed her around, ducking her head to greet her gaze. “What’s wrong?”

“Dining with the King is always…” her lace-trimmed hands groped for words, “a _mixed_ blessing.”

“Is it so very bad?”

“No… but…” she sighed. “I’ve told you before, I think - I’m not too fond of the company of men.”

Constance chuckled, attempting lightness: “Not even the father of your son…?” Her smile faded fast. “I… I’m sorry, I…”

Anne’s face had closed, turning abruptly away. She shook her head a little, reached to cover her mouth.

“It…” Anne shook her head. “No. But that is not an indulgence I…” Her face came around to Constance’s and the emotions she glimpsed were hard and wild before being heeled down.

The Queen raised her head. Smiled a little formally. “And you, Constance?”

“Me?”

“You have not yet gone home to visit your husband since taking up your role here.”

Constance schooled her face as rapidly as she could, but hurt still came through. “I… I didn’t…”

The Queen’s face softened. “You are a lot freer than you think.”

“My… Am I?” She rallied. “How?”

“I know that what binds you to your husband is more duty than love, but… but there is still love for you…”

Constance put a hand out, tentatively, towards her, found it hovering. “I… I know…”

“I. I mean to say that. That there are not the same constraints on you as there are on me.”

“But…”

“You. Your love, Constance, should be…” she waved her arm, turned towards the window, “sunlit.” She turned back to her. “Not. Not…”

“Ohhh…” said Constance, a descending note as her face turned down. Anne groped upwards, eyes suddenly brimming, grasped Constance’s hand.

They stayed like this for a while, wire-taut on unsaid things, gripping hands until Constance leaned forward and said: “Will you kiss me, please, Anne?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said in a rush, reached up and touched her other hand to Constance’s cheek, leaned to touch her mouth to her mouth, soft as petals falling.

They stayed there for a moment afterwards, forehead to forehead, before moving apart with subtle sniff each. Constance stood, almost to attention.

“Constance, could you…?”

“I’ll send Sofia in now, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you.”


	3. Sol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kiss for a penny?

“Ten sous.”

“Five.”

“Nine, and I’ll throw in soup.”

“Six, and you keep your ‘soup’ far away from me.”

“Gawd, you’re a picky bugger, aren’t you?! Where you from, anyway?”

“Five.”

“You said six.”

“That was before you started asking questions. I don’t want it for the whole night anyway.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so?!”

“I did.”

“Oh.”

Athos heaved the sigh of an impatient man with a lightly bruised face, a disreputable hat, and his hand on a well-worn sword.

The other recalculated rapidly. “Six?”

“Six sounds fine. Is there a key?”

“Keys is extra, monsieur.”

“Even for a private room?”

“You want a private room?”

His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. “Emphatically.”

“What’s that?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“Oh.” He looked him up and down. Athos widened his stance subtly, raised an eyebrow. The tavernkeeper’s small belligerence collapsed. “Six, then, sir. Do you know when you’ll be out? Only I have a girl comes in, likes to use it…”

“She’ll wait, if needs be.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

Athos relented. “A few hours. No more.”

“Yes, monsieur. This way.”

The room was… well, it was a room. Not large, not exactly clean, but private. He cast a eye towards the bed and decided that “sagging” was probably the best word for it.

“Are these sheets clean?”

“Er.”

“Are. They. Clean.”

“Well…”

“Here’s another sou - bring me clean sheets.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Candle?”

“Candles is extr… here, monsieur.” 

Athos paced the small, flickering room until the sheets arrived. He took them off the confused-looking maid, tipped her a few deniers, and shut the door. After some internal debate, he stripped off the existing linen, dumped it outside the room, and remade the bed, as drum-tight as he could make it.

 _If I live long enough to retire_ , he thought, wryly, _I’ll confuse the hell out of the staff_. Realising that he’d assumed that his retirement would include staff dampened his mood again.

“You’re no longer de la Fère, remember?” Signed, sealed, delivered.

He strode to the window, peered out. Nothing. He strode to the other window, peered out, and whistled. The hooded figure on the street turned and peered up at him, then walked away as he waved the candle gently.

He paced. Sat on the bed. Paced. Unclipped his sword, laid it on the floor. Picked it up again. Slung it on the bed as someone rapped on the door gently - two knocks, short pause, three spaced knocks, a pause, four knocks, a short pause and one more knock.

He strode to the door and pulled it open a crack, then further as the slim figure slipped inside. He shut and locked it.

D’Artagnan pulled his hood down, looking around, eyebrows rising in the middle, mouth tightening slightly.

“What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t pay too much for this place, did you?”

“Probably.”

That won him a small smile.

“Well, now you have me here, monsieur, what do you plan to do with me?”

“As many things as time will allow.”

D’Artagnan’s smile broadened as he slipped off the cloak and slung it on the room’s one chair. He walked over to Athos, who smiled tightly, then put a hand to the back of his neck, pulling him close.

D’Artagnan sighed happily, leant into the kiss, humming. Their embrace tightened, arms about each other’s backs, until they separated, gasping, d’Artagnan rubbing his ribs lightly.

“Boots,” said Athos.

“Boots.”

“Did, er, did anyone see you?” said Athos, toeing his loose and leaning against the wall one arm at a time to pull each off.

“I don’t think so,” said d’Artagnan. “Besides, it doesn’t look like a place where people notice things.”

“No doubt. How did you work out wh…?”

“Easy - no-one else had fastidiously dumped laundry outside.”

“Ah.”

“Heh,” said d’Artagnan, busy with his boots, “this was certainly easier when…” he tails off.

“We were in Orléans. True. But we can’t take off there every time we want to…”

“Yes, of course,” he said, hurriedly.

A small silence. Athos turned, one hand still on the wall. “No, something else.”

“It’s nothing - I spoke without thinking.”

“You are a terrible liar,” he said, slowly, hearing what d’Artagnan called his ‘public voice’ starting to narrow his tongue.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not in our line of work…”

“Maybe I’m just terrible at lying to you.”

“Hmm.”

_He means when he shared a house with Constance Bonacieux._

I know.

_He still…_

Fuck you, I know.

“What’s that?”

“I said: I’m going to fuck you. From below.”

“What…? Oh… Oh, Christ.” D’Artagnan looked to be experiencing some pleasurable species of panic.

Athos stepped over to him, eyes glittering, seized him by the shoulder and kissed him hard. “Time to take those clothes off, boy.”

“Hey… started d’Artagnan, softly.

“Didn’t you hear me?” His voice twisted to a growl.

“Athos…”

“I said: take your clothes off,” louder.

And d’Artagnan said: “No.”

“What?” He frowned. “Why?” his grip tightened.

D’artagnan’s face flickered briefly, then he said: “Because when I submit to you, _every_ time I do, I want you to know it’s because I want to.” He paused. “And I don’t want to. Not like this.”

The muscles in Athos’s jaw bulged but he did not move, and he did not speak.

“I don’t know why you’re angry,” d’Artagnan went on, “but I won’t be with you like this any more than I would if you were drunk.” D’Artagnan could feel his breath slipping to shake, pulled on its reins.

The colour was mounting in Athos’s face and his fingers tensed briefly, but he said nothing, standing stock-still, unblinking.

D’Artagnan felt bone-weary for a moment, but then he took a breath and a half-step, very deliberately, forward under Athos’s hand so that his doublet brushed his. His face as neutral as he could make it, he said: “I’m going to touch you now,” and brought his hand up to Athos’s face, laid it gently against his cheek. Athos’s eyes closed, and that fearful tension started to quiver.

D’Artagnan swayed closer, moved his hand to rest gently on Athos’s shoulder, laid his cheek against his friend’s. After a moment, he turned his head very slowly, very gently, side-to-side, brushing Athos’s cheek with his own, over and over.

A thread of sound came from Athos’s throat, like an elongated whimper. D’Artagnan didn’t stop, just nuzzled in a little closer, stroked a little firmer.

Athos’s hand relaxed its grip just a notch. D’Artagnan started to make a low humming sound, and Athos’s high, brittle keening petered out. His grip softened.

He moved his own head just a fraction to the side, towards him. D’Artagnan slowed in response. And on the next stroke to centre, Athos moved his head a little further. D’Artagnan quietened. All that could be heard was their breath, and soon even that stilled as Athos shifted his head that fraction further and the corners of their lips brushed.

Again, and now Athos was definitely nuzzling back, and this time their lips met.

Once more, and their lips met, paused, and pressed.

And Athos slid his hand to caress d’Artagnan’s head; d’Artagnan did likewise, and they were kissing, infinitely softly, as startled and awed as if it were the very first time.

Athos’s mouth opened a fraction and d’Artagnan mirrored him. Their breath came heavy now in the small space, and their other hands were on each other’s waists, then backs, then jaws, their kiss deepening, the first hint of tongue coming, going, returning, and now d’Artagnan moaned softly, almost against his volition, and the kissing turned heavy, bruising, voiced; fingers fled to push off doublets, fumbled with belts, tightened in shirts.

“Ah, God,” came Athos’s voice, somewhere between anguish and desire.

“Come on,” panted d’Artagnan, pulling at his shirt.

Between them they undressed, d’Artagnan pulling Athos over to the bed.

“Can… mmmmfh, uh, can you mmmhmove that? Please?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s not the kind of sword I want in bed.”

Athos sniggered, and then he roared, hands propped on the edge of the sagging mattress. D’Artagnan’s chest unlocked at the sound and he laughed too.

Shaking his head and sniffing, Athos, smirking, lifted the sword off the bed and laid it across the chair.

“Lie down,” said d’Artagnan.

He lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I want to look after you, and I can’t do that with you standing up.”

“Look… aft…”

“Please. Lie down. You need this.”

With a hideous crunch of tortured frame, he levered himself into the bed and lay down, a little self-consciously, on his back, hands behind his head. D’Artagnan made a little chuff of sound looking down at him, felt himself swell at the sight. Athos quirked an eyebrow, flicking his eyes down, then back up to his face.

 _Please let this work_ , he thought, and clambered on after him. “Turn over, please,” he requested, gently.

Athos’s expression was unreadable, but he turned, silently. D’Artagnan started to stroke him; light touches that slowly deepened - an extension of his earlier nuzzling, up and down his back, across his shoulders, down the backs of thighs and calves. Athos sighed, head sideways on the back of his crossed hands, and wriggled deeper into the rustling mattress.

D’Artagnan added a few firm strokes downwards over his buttocks, and Athos flexed, then relaxed with a small groan.

A pause, then Athos felt his lover’s body cover his, and his mouth begin to kiss his shoulders, back, buttocks, thighs. Again the sweep, slower, warmer, his tongue beginning to make play, leaving trails that cooled as his body moved down again.

And again, this time the tongue frankly lashing over his skin. Athos’s breathing began to come harder, gathering at the back of his throat, and he began to shift minutely against the sheets. D’Artagnan smiled to see it, and swirled his tongue down the outer edge of the cleft between Athos’s buttocks. Athos groaned and writhed. He added a light pressure to peel the flesh apart a little and let his tongue slip deeper. To his intense relief, Athos moaned and pushed back into the sensation.

His tongue drove deeper, Athos pushed back again, and soon he was tonguing the most delicate flesh, revelling in the texture of it, twining his own moans with Athos, who was fisting the clean sheets, grinding his face into the bed.

D’Artagnan pushed his tongue a little deeper, and Athos’s breath went somewhat still. After a couple of gentle pushes against its resistance he returned to the broad, swirling caresses, taking in the full stretch from his balls to the outer edge of his cleft, over and over, and heard Athos moan, felt him start to move again.

He licked a pathway up Athos’s spine, adding his own weight until he covered him, feeling Athos buck back against him, watching his fingers clench and flex in the bedclothes, feeling his own eyes start to shutter against his volition to heighten the other sensations.

“Turn over,” he whispered, before he could lose himself, lifting on his hands and toes. Athos squirmed over swiftly and they started to kiss, deeply, D’Artagnan dropping his weight to him as they started to grind together, rhythm accelerating.

He caught Athos’s lower lip in his teeth, pulled it slightly, heard him whimper, felt him harden and _push_. Athos had one hand behind d’Artagnan’s neck, the other cupping his arse, pulling them tighter together. He moved to kiss Athos’s neck, fighting his own need, now he could clearly see and feel himself, _ah God_ , spending himself on Athos’s belly and chest. _Fuck_.

“Ah, fuck,” moaned Athos.

“Tell me,” breathed d’Artagnan. “Tell me what you want.”

“You, you,” Athos’s voice somewhere between a whisper and a groan. “You.” His eyes shot open. “Oh, I want to come!” He turned his head to d’Artagnan. “Please, oh God, please.”

“Mouth or hand, or…”

“Oh God, anything,” he said, “ _please_.”

“Jesu,” muttered d’Artagnan, who felt he’d never seen him so naked as now.

He dived to tongue him, kneeling to one side, taking him deep in his mouth, this angle making it easier aside from the slight curve of him. Fuck, d’Artagnan was lost for a moment in the notion of Athos fucking him, as promised, from below, face to face, how that would feel, _Jesu_ , returned to himself swirling his tongue around him, drawing him deep into his throat, retreating to breathe and dive, breathe and dive, adding hard strokes of his hand.

Athos seized him, gently at first then with punishing, trembling strokes whose grip betrayed how close he was himself. Mouth stretching around the head of his cock, d’Artagnan moaned in shocked pleasure, heard Athos groan in response, felt him speed his thrusts into him.

“Oh God, I can’t,” cried Athos and d’Artagnan redoubled his efforts, feeling, at last, his lover tense and jet hard into his throat, throbbing and throbbing, each spasm drawing another quiet sob.

D’Artagnan waited until he was finished, swallowing, licking, swallowing, revelling in it all, letting the tender flesh drop gently onto his belly.

“Come, come…” Athos muttered, and d’Artagnan moved to hug him. “No, no,” and he turned his head and shoulders blindly, drawing d’Artagnan to his mouth.

“Oh, _fuck!_ ” Within a handful of strokes d’Artagnan felt his own startled release overwhelm him, hand braced on the centre of Athos’s chest. He fought to stay vaguely upright and turned, wobbly but determined, to slide down Athos’s side and hold him close.

He kissed him, revelling as ever in the taste of himself on his lover’s tongue, feeling his lips’ tension eddying.

Abruptly, Athos turned, buried his hot face in d’Artagnan’s neck, his mouth moving, but not in kisses; maybe as words, though d’Artagnan couldn’t make anything out.

He kissed him on top of his head, held him close, rocking, hoping, but not knowing for what.

_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t tell you. I can’t._

As they were dressing, Athos asked, in a voice both preoccupied and careless: “Do you see much of, er, Constance these days?”

“Hmm?” said d’Artagnan, having got in a knot with his points and belt pouches. “Oh, we bump into each other from time to time at the Palace. There,” as he triumphed over the leather.

“How are things between you?”

“Er, good. You know - friendly, but… she’s busy. But. Yeah. Friendly.” He looks up. “Why?”

“No, no reason. Just. You were sad before. I… I wanted to be sure…”

“And I’m happy now.” He grinned. “Come on!”

“Oh, er, we should…” he gestured.

“Well, I’m not climbing out of the window this time.”

He smiled, almost reluctantly. “No.” He walked over, d’Artagnan’s cloak over one arm, cast it round him, letting his arms linger close. “You shouldn’t have to hide.”

D’Artagnan stared at him, a one-sided-frown dipping. Athos held him by the arms, face unreadable. D’Artagnan pulled him in and they embraced, kissed, and d’Artagnan was gone.

Athos sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, and counted the number of ways he was a complete and utter fool until it was time to follow suit.


	4. Tesserae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first cast.

Athos winces at the sheer amount of activity in the bright practice yard. As his vision adjusts, he sees men running, jumping, performing all sorts of rhythmic contortions. He screws his eyes up, shakes his head, and takes a large gulp of water.

“Early start, isn’t it?” says a cheerful voice.

Athos cracks his eyes open to see Aramis smiling at him. He gestures towards the mayhem. “Yes. What’s this?”

Aramis grins. “The new swordmaster. Very keen on people brushing up their muscles groups before they swing swords around.”

Athos frowns. “That sounds… modern…”

“Ancient, actually, apparently.” They start to stroll along the shaded area towards the stables.

“Roman?”

“Greek. Named for someone, but can’t remember who.”

Athos grunts.

“Of course, the Romans imported a lot of what the Greeks recommended, especially in warfare.”

“Right.”

As they enter the stables, Aramis, still in that cheerful, almost academic voice, says: “They had all sorts of ideas about love between men, of course, fostering strong bonds in battle. You all right?”

Athos has choked on a careless mouthful. “Mmh,” he says, wiping his beard.

“Something went down the wrong way?”

His eyes narrow. “It’s water.”

“I’m sure, old chap. Another late one last night?”

“Yes,” he says slowly.

“It’ll ruin your health…”

“Don’t tell the new swordmaster, then.”

The stable door bangs open behind them and a gruff, unmistakeable voice calls: “Reporting for escort duty! Who wants to watch an eclipse?!” They turn to see Porthos barrelling in, alongside a softly smiling d’Artagnan. Athos’s chest and guts do the familiar kick-thump, cold-hot jolt, while he knows his face remains impassive. “Bit early, isn’t it?” Porthos asks as he passes.

“It’s water.”

“Oh, right. We all good then?” he asks, checking over his horse.

“You seem eager!” remarks Aramis.

“It’s historic, innit?” He waves his hands high. “The sun dims!”

“Very mythic.”

“That too. Come on.”

Royal guarding duty means full regalia. The horses have been curried to a shine, and blue cloaks are checked and spread at a full, skirting slant. They walk their gleaming steeds out to the yard to prepare to ride.

“Nice day,” remarks d’Artagnan, squinting up into the sky. He brushes past Athos with that seeming accidental touch of shoulder and hip that are so familiar now to him that it makes his throat ache. He grits his teeth against it, swallowing hard, finding himself abruptly irritated at his… brother-at-arm’s seeming inability to find a hat, as if courting sunstroke is adorable.

As he checks his straps, preparatory to mounting, d’Artagnan comes alongside him, checking his own. “That thing last night,” he murmurs, “I can see why you like doing it so much.” He slants a sly, copper-white grin over his shoulder at Athos, and everything in him wants to glint back at him, but

Athos turns and stares at him briefly, dismissively, eyes like stones, mouth impassive. D’Artagnan feels a chill, feels his smile drop away. “Athos,” he murmurs, turning fully and reaching out reflexively, “if I've done something to upset you, please…” But Athos says nothing, just raises one eyebrow briefly and mounts with what looks almost like a sneer.

Jaw clenched, d’Artagnan does likewise. As he stares at the horse in front of him, he remembers what he said to Porthos about never putting one’s trust in love. Seems he needed to learn that all over again.

The ride to the Palace grounds is short enough, but Porthos asks Athos, as they dismount: “What’s wrong with you, then?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“Couldn’t lever a word out of you on the way over. Either of you.”

Athos is mildly astonished. Conversation between the four of them tends to be initiated, and, to a certain extent, carried by Aramis and Porthos, but… he shakes it off, grunts: “Late night.”

“You want to watch it,” says Porthos, uncharacteristically earnest. “You’re not as young as you were.”

“I’m not _that_ old…” he says, stung.

“Not what I mean.”

D’Artagnan is a shape of silence which deliberately moves itself to the far side of the others. Athos crumples his perverse disappointment and fists it down deep as they walk their horses to pause within respectful distance of the celebrants under the marquees.

Constance has spent more time last night than she will admit to anyone crying in her bed. She is grateful for the shade but feels pale and creased, and has difficulty raising a smile for anyone. Especially, her teeth grit, with that one here, poised and pouting.

The Queen sits, eats, smiles stonily at lights in her eyes while the rest of the children fawn and titter and him, the big, self-satisfied numpty, holding his precious baby in one arm while… she grits her teeth, wants to reach forward, touch her shoulder, give her some measure of comfort and… no. So. Look away.

There, approaching, the four of them, so familiar to her now she can tell them all at a distance, though only one is daft enough to come out in weather like this without a hat. Despite herself, a smile strikes deep into her core and she raises one to him, a merry flag waving. Idiot. Oh!

Athos sees her wave and him waving back, grinning down to the bone. _Look at him. Happy. Sunlit. God damn you for a coward, let him have this._

“It sickens me to see the Queen humiliated like this,” sighs Aramis.

Despite himself, he looks. Oh. Oh, right. That. That’s just a pinch of extra venom on this dog turd of a day. And what the _hell_ is she wearing?!

“I can’t be here. I’m going back to the garrison.” Duty can fuck itself.

“The King will notice your absence.” No…

He hears d’Artagnan say: “I doubt it…” as he moves away. And while we’re at it, sobriety can fuck itself too.

Constance feels misery clench in her belly again. A-. Nnh. The Queen has been nothing but pleasant to her all morning, but… that is all. Pleasant, charming, and as distant as

“Milady de Winter, would you do us the honour of playing the Moon?

“But I am Venus, sire.” Constance swallows a growl. _You’re no bloody goddess, you cheap, glittery poseur._

“Well, for the purposes of the experiment, you shall be the Moon and the Queen will be the Earth.”

That she is.

From a distance, the strange pageant plays out all-but silently. When it seems to be done, Porthos nods to the others and they stroll across the sward to the celebrants.

“Ah!” exclaims the King, clearly in an expansive mood. “Our gallant escorts approach!”

They halt and make soldierly courtesies.

“Sire,” says Rochefort, with his habitual sneer, “is there any need for these… _extras_ …? My highly-trained Red Guards will be accompanying us.”

“One can never be too careful, Rochefort,” returns the Kings with a waggish mien, “And besides, they add a lovely splash of colour,” he gestures. “Those red leather _aprons_ are a bit…” and his nose wrinkles briefly as he looks around the throng, who titter dutifully. The Queen bestows her usual warmth on the Musketeers.

D’Artagnan wonders if Constance knows how much she stands out from everyone here. She is as richly dressed at the rest, but… no, he decides, it will have been a deliberate decision - the hairstyle, the flowers peeking from it, the deceptively simple-looking gown. She is supposed to be background, but is anything but. He just wishes. No. No, wishing will do nothing. The smile she offers him now is distracted, so he offers a polite one back with a small nod of his head.

Châtillon is an hour’s slow ride of the grand carriage, guards, and other outriders through a pleasant fading of city from the Louvre to the picturesque (that is to say: tamed) countryside surrounding the old fort. Say what you like about Rochefort, and all of the Musketeers have their favourite epithets for him, he bestows and arranges the guards with a good eye to the balance of security and decorum. Everyone picks their way slowly down the hill, the noble guests with their eyes to the decorations and fantastical figures of the players, the King full of anticipation at the scientific toys in store, the guards with their eyes constantly moving, noting cover, terrain, entrances and exits; quickly dismissing the players - no hidden weapons, stance all wrong.

Milady eschews any assistance, but Constance finds herself escorted down the trickier bits, unable to see her feet due to her gown, by d’Artagnan. Aramis is paying courtly attention to the Governess, of course, and helping her with her pretty burden. Constance finds herself mapping the people, putting them in the now-familiar patterns of pieces in her mind - knights, fools, towers, pawns. She rather thinks that Porthos is a tower, Rochefort and Milady fools, Aramis a knight, and likely d’Artagnan too, unless he’s a tower. _Either the rest of us are pawns, or I need to make a new game with new pieces_. And, as the others talk of the forthcoming celestial events, her mind is on Earth, cataloguing and thinking: something about this doesn’t fit, like there are pieces she can’t see, because if we’re the light pieces, who’s playing dark?

 _Not everything’s a game_ , she scolds herself, but it feels hollow, and she finds herself saying, aloud: “I can’t help being nervous.”

D’Artagnan pats her hand, resting on his arm, “There’s nothing to be scared of,” he says, heartily.

Irritation bristles. How exactly like a man. “I know that. It’s just… a feeling.” I thought he was better than that, but here he is cloaked and badged, and… that’s a kind of mask, isn’t it? Hmm.

There is a flash of white at one of the windows, but it’s gone when she looks up. Thunder rolls.

“I hope there’ll be no clouds to spoil the view!” cries the King, enthusiasm undimmed by the long, somewhat rural walk.

Inside, there is an air of society parties, and the guests exclaim over food, drink, the pennants, the painted players, the dark glasses; they mingle and murmur, flirt and feast.

“Get those glasses off,” says Porthos softly, to d’Artagnan. He smiles lightly in return, pockets them, watches the Comte bestow his men, the guests filter further in. “This doesn’t look like any fort to me,” mutters Porthos, tapping a stained, carved column.

“Well, it was clearly a manor that grew up around an ancient fortification.”

“Oh. That right?”

His face twists lightly. “Probably.” Porthos grunts and moves on.

As the guests drift downwards he elects to follow them while the others cover the upper area. He feels a quick twist of missing Athos. He has grown so used to knowing that, even if he can’t see him, he’s there. Unbidden, Athos’s heat is behind his right shoulder, fist in his hair, whispering in his ear what he’s about to do, hand smoothing slowly down his torso to grip…

 _Get a hold of yourself_ , he thinks, then feels his eyes widen as he wonders where that phrase came from. Shaking his head he completes a slow circuit of the viewing room. Briefly he wonders at the work that must have been undertaken to so completely strip this place out. He supposes that some of the machinery was repurposed to make the creaking jugglery above. Except that this room was clearly once a chapel in the old style…

Frowning, he dismisses the thought - this is where they are, and _there_ , _there_ , and _there_ are the entrance points. He finds himself paused behind The Queen as the room darkens and, and of course this means being near Constance. Again, the strong impression of her not quite blending  blossoms in him, along with some inconvenient memories - the fierce look on her face when in the grip of physical desire, the way - dear God - the way she laughs, or weeps, entirely in the moment she has chosen to inhabit, dragging him along with her, so that he never knows if he is her follower or her protector.

Her feeling of something wrong, the unseen player, is growing stronger. Marmion has an agenda of more than theatricality and catering to illustrious patronage. But… she doesn’t know how she knows, and that’s distracting as well as frustrating, and into that same category comes d’Artagnan. She knows very well that he’s standing behind her, can feel his weight on the room, on her, in much the same way as she feels the Queen or, God save it, the more baleful presences of Milady or Rochefort. And she can’t help but revisit the joy that he has always been in her life, the exultation that should have been so simple - man, woman, a sparkle of shared glances, ridiculous risks, the way he makes her bold where other men have always sought to make her shy. And, as the room darkens at Marmion’s gesture, her mind is conjuring him behind her, carved slenderness pressed into her back, one hand sliding up to caress her breast, the other down to caress her…

Damn.

She turns, in life as well as memory, to… to see him urging her on to join the spectacle with the others, one side of his face lifted in a gesture that combines mirth and encouragement and acknowledgement of the ludicrousness of the situation.

She walks slowly to the Heavens reflected, still trying to examine the board from every angle, to see to the next move, not knowing that it has already happened.


	5. Kaleidoscope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mirror cracks from side to side

No, no, no, no, no!

Help!

No!

Have some compassion.

I’m gonna kill you!

You won’t get away with this!

I’ll have your head for this.

*  *  *

The last full solar eclipse Athos can remember was when he was very young. Now, as then, the creeping, daytime chill strikes deeper than you’d imagine, and the animals and birds stamp and cry their distress.

This wine is… it’s not the best wine, but not the worst either. And there’s something about sharing a cup, elbow to elbow with his captain. With Treville.

With his captain.

The wine chimes in his guts and he tries to ignore the fact that its note is sour, far sourer than the note that…

No.

_That he summons in you. Why are you doing this?_

Shut up.

_You know there’s no going back. You do know that, don’t you?_

Shut up. He takes an ugly-fast slug, pours more.

_You can’t drown me out. You can’t kill me._

No, I know there’s no point in trying to kill it… You have to just let it fade.

_Why are you doing this? WHY?! ANSWER ME!_

I answer to no-one.

_You answer to him, to Treville, don’t you?_

And?

_And so you’re a liar._

And you’re a fool.

The unconquered light caresses his face and he squints into it, can feel something trying to answer back, reach into it. He clenches his jaw, hard, but does not leave the balcony, does not follow Treville into the dark. Not yet.

*  *  *

Focus. Concentrate. Where are the pieces going? What’s on the board?

What’s at stake?

“Because I care about him! Because he’s my friend!”

So close, she can see the mess they’ve made of his face, keeps her bound hands by her waist, she’ll only hurt him otherwise.

So close, he can smell the flowers in her hair, keeps his bound hands by his waist, he’ll only…

“We’ll get out of here. All right?”

She bows her head - one knight, blocked; Queen, blocked; Queen’s Knight, tower, and Queen’s Fool taken; King in check; plenty of pawns; one fool left - the King’s Fool. What now?

He kisses her head. Because. Because

Well, she thinks, maintaining her look of bored equanimity. I’ve got three cards and they’re all pathetic. He’s got two aces, a King, and a Queen… her eyes slide… and a Jack. Adorable.

Time to play. “I’ll do it.”

Bla, bla, no second chances… Idiot. You take as many chances as you can get. _Immutable_ , ugh, for the love of…

“Frankly, I would rather be dead than listen to your endless babble for one more minute.”

I would rather go out a face card, wouldn’t you?

“Milady, don’t do it. Don’t play his game!” So adorable. And so very not useful right now.

“I order you not to risk your life, Milady.”

Seriously? “Well, perhaps I can help.” Seriously…

“Heads.” Of course.

“You win.” Of course.

“I forbid it! If the King cannot have his freedom, no-one can!”

Ugh. Idiots. The only person who does not watch her go is Constance Bonacieux, who looks deep in thought. Let’s see how far _that_ gets her.

_Look at me._

*  *  *

Ow…

Huh.

Well, there’s lucky. And, um. All right. Up we go!

Beautiful day for it.

*  *  *

The fool is off the board but not taken. So out in the open. I. What does that

He talks about choices but. But actually

I think…

“Take them.”

“No! No! No!”

Then she turns and steps away from him, says the only thing she can, hearing her voice shake: “Let me go with them. My duty is at the Queen’s side.”

He feels the bond between them stretch, grow taut.

It’s in the darkness you make the truest choices. But I am the immutable hand of Fate. “Take the others.”

*  *  *

His jaw is clenched so tight that it drives a spike of pain through his head. And still he can’t say anything. The others wait for a full minute. When he does speak, it’s to Treville, and his teeth are still locked together.

“She is a liar and a cheat. Why should we trust her?”

“Aramis is dead. The King is in terrible danger. But, by all means, let’s discuss my moral character.”

He almost laughs. And later, after she’s talked, pragmatically, theatrically so, about how she’s risking her life for her iniquitous position at court, he waits until he’s left the room, in search of clothing for her, and then he does, roaring like a man who’s finally seen the joke.

Because she’s no longer Anne, and she’s no longer the Cardinal’s assassin, and she may be the King’s mistress but she’s also, and he has to lean against a doorpost, weak at this thought, now one of the King’s Guard, which makes them brothers.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asks, sharply, as he returns.

He shakes his head, smiling. “Your clothes.” She stares. “Well? What did you expect?”

She hoists an eyebrow. “I will be the best-looking Musketeer anyone has ever seen.”

“Pretty sure that’s d’Artagnan.”

“Nah,” she says, “Aramis is prettier. Now piss off while I change.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” he says, leaning against the doorpost with his arms crossed, one leg hooked behind him.

“Let’s not get into old habits.”

“You’re right,” he says easily, and wanders away, savouring her brief look of confusion.

*  *  *

He tells her that he’s sorry, and that she’s strong, and he thinks that these are the only gifts he has left to give her.

She tells him about her regrets. And she hears herself whining and hates it, hates it, wishes she could just lean, lean close, smell his skin, taste his mouth, his poor mouth, one more time, wishes, wishes that what she felt inside wasn’t like a tearing, one part here, one part of her upstairs with The Q-Anne, Anne, _Anne_ , the other in some fantasy world where she was both unmarried _and_ had met d’Artagnan _and_ had been The Queen of France’s lover, _and_ had learned to fight, _and_ had somehow persuaded d’Artagnan to stay at home today so that we’d be… arguing over his stained boots or my learning Spanish, or…

And the other part that is watching, and listening, and waiting, and won’t shut up. _Just shut up._

Queen’s Pawn to King’s Knight.

“Always.”

Oh, _God._

And he wonders how he can have such strong, undentable affection and admiration for someone he simultaneously wants to shake for their stubbornness and thinks: _Wow. I really know how to pick them, don’t I?_

*  *  *

He… he! He’s alive! He. He. He doesn’t see me. He. He.

They.

No.

*  *  *

She kills a man with a poniard and a quip, and he can’t tell if it makes him feel… something… but there’s no time, and no-one else is going to care that the symbol nearest the door is that used for Venus.

*  *  *

In a way, he has to admire the man’s courage. It’s sly, self-serving, and frankly creepy, but he absolutely _does not stop_.

Of course, in every other way, if he’s never in the same room with the weaselly cunt-maggot ever again, it’ll be too soon.

“OWWWWWWWWWWW!”

*  *  *

She wonders if he knows that, right now, in full flight, he is more of a man, more of a leader of men, more regal than anyone in this room.

_That might be treason._

I think that fucking his wife was a lot more like treason.

_You know what this is, don’t you?_

Oh God.

_Pieces gone, options dwindling._

Endgame.

“No, Marmion. Wait! Wait! Please, wait! Please!”

Final move. Make it a good one.

“Look me in the eyes before you kill me.”

This is for you.

“Think of your wife and children and how they would judge you now.”

Anne. D’Artagnan. I loved you _so much_.

“Do that, then shoot if you want.”

This is for me.

“They’d be ashamed.”

I’m not ashamed.

“Then take me, then. Take me. My life for hers.”

No.

Yes. “You wanted a life? Take mine.”

“No, d’Artagnan.”

“You think I can just stand there and watch you die? I won’t do it. I _can’t_ do it.”

Oh, God, no. This is my move, you idiot. “Please, d’Artagnan. Go. Get help.”

You stubborn, stubborn woman. “Not a chance.”

Go, live, grow old. Please.

I’m not going anywhere. “I’ve made my offer.”

“Why?”

“Because I love her.”

Oh, God. Oh, God, this is it.

“Promise me you’ll let her go.”

No.

Yes. _Always._

The shot. The choice. The brother, falling.

And they’re bound together again.

*  *  *

He’s alive, he’s alive.

She’s alive.

The King’s alive.

I’m… alive.

“You’re welcome.”

Hmm.

*  *  *

She has his respect.

And she doesn’t care.

And one more heavy link gets broken.

“That’s a good look on you.”

“Don’t push it,” she tosses over her shoulder.

The others fall back a little before leaving the colonnade.

“Did you ever stop to consider,” says Aramis, “that she may have killed more people than you have?”

“Well, not until now.”

“I hear you got chained to Rochefort,” says d’Artagnan to Porthos. “How was that?”

“Well, he went on for ages about some married bird he kept a hard-on for all through prison, dislocated my shoulder, and is now apparently the hero of the hour.”

“I have it on good authority,” says Aramis, “that punching him feels good.”

“Really good,” says Athos.

“Maybe I’ll try that when my shoulder feels better.”

“Does it hurt?” asks Aramis, physicianly for a moment.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Fair enough.”

“I mean, there was that axe wound in my back.”

“Ooh, yeah.”

“And that time with the crossbow quarrel in my thigh.”

“Yep.”

“Not to mention this,” he points a thumb to his eye.

“Remind me how that happened again…?”

Athos looks at d’Artagnan, who gives him a weary, tight-lipped sort of a smile. They nod at each other, and Athos picks up speed a little.

Just let it fade.


	6. Coup de Grâce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cannonade

“Thank God. Oh, thank God!”

She reaches the top of the hill and they are sobbing joyfully in each other’s arms, consuming each other’s faces with their eyes. Anne’s hands are locked on her waist, and Constance can’t stop touching her, laying her palm on the tender place where her dear face meets her fair neck again and again.

Alive. Alive and in my arms.

“You have suffered too much in my service, Constance. I am sorry for it.”

Never say that. “I am only glad to see you and the Dauphin safe and well.”

She nearly kisses her. Enfolds her again, then gives way to the King.

It’s a long trudge to the top, and some straggle behind. Athos turns to watch everyone reach the summit, clocks the quiet way Milady passes, head-down towards her mount. Aramis clearly doesn’t have eyes for anything except the carriage, makes his courtesy under both his and Constance’s watchful gazes and turns away. Athos supposes it’s not surprising that the Queen’s Confidante should have at least guessed _something_. However else he may feel about her, he knows she’s no-one’s fool.

Well, nearly.

Anne grips Constance’s hand as if the thought of letting go is too much to countenance for now, even as Constance gazes away down the hill. She knows she only has… that she has given up… that… And it’s fine. It will be fine.

Porthos joins his brothers, but d’Artagnan lingers near the bottom of the slope. He is half-thinking: if I stay here, then I won’t have to get on with the rest of my life without…

And suddenly it’s too much for Constance, who looks back, meets Anne’s wide eyes, nods, gently tugs her hand free, and flies down the hill.

Everybody watches the collision.

She fell off a horse as a child once, flat on her back. She couldn’t breathe then, either, and nothing in her life had prepared her for the pain and panic, and no-one could lift it from her. No-one can lift it from her. Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees Marguerite looking at her.

The first time he was stabbed, the thing he felt was the impact, then the pressure - the blade was very sharp. His breath went out, hard. And then the pain opened up like sickness inside him, hot and cold together. And you try to suck the breath back in but. But it hurts, and yet you go on. “Damn,” he says, softly, breath shallow, extremities tingling into numbness. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees Aramis looking at him.

This is what you’ve schooled yourself for your life long, so stack this deep inside and now smile, God damn you. Smile.

Smile.

Because your brothers are smiling.

And she is smiling and.

And. Swallow hard.

Smile.

Because he is smiling, rapt and wrapped in her.

And you love him.

Yes.

And you love her.

Yes.

And he’s happy.

Yes.

And she’s happy.

Yes.

So, despite everything, you are also happy.

Tired, bruised, filthy, they revel in each other. His poor face, field-dressed by Aramis, is marked by the day, and creases soft and perfect, laughing, loving, glowing. She looks… beautiful, of course. She still has flowers in her hair and he pulls the scent of her deep inside himself. He kisses the raw patch on her right wrist and she presses one just below the cut on his face. He offers to carry her up the hill and she refuses, but will not relinquish his hand as they labour up, her skirts caught high.

She barely remembers the journey back to Paris, only the moment where they part on brief promises, the Musketeers peeling off towards the garrison, the remnants of the Red Guard staying close to the royal party. The carriage is conspicuously more empty and the members of it considerably more quiet than earlier.

He. She will see him tonight. He.

Yes.

The Musketeers’ horses clatter into the yard. Everyone dismounts to varying degrees of steadiness. Athos, being the freshest of the four, gathers their reins and sends the other three to look after themselves.

Porthos claps Aramis on the back. “So, how big a drink does cheating death warrant?”

“All of it, I should think.”

“That’s my boy. D’Artagnan, you joining us?”

“I, er…”

Aramis grins. “I think he’d like to get freshened up and head for the Palace.”

“A drop of courage will do him the world of good!”

“Food,” says Aramis. “You want food.”

“I want so much food,” agrees d’Artagnan, hand to belly. “And a wash.”

“Many blessings on your, er, fortune’s favour, that”

“He’s gone all poetical on me,” says Porthos. “How many fingers’m I holding up?”

“Very funny. Drink now please.”

D’Artagnan waves them off, laughing, and goes to satisfy his appetite.

Later, having washed himself as well as the barracks bathhouse can provide, he is just changing his linen, breeched and booted but still shirtless when he hears a footfall behind him. Heart beating hard, suddenly, he turns. Aramis is propped against the doorway, a cup in his hand and a quiet smile on his face, which is still showing the deeper marks of his earlier, more spectacular exit from the fort.

Swallowing his ridiculous disappointment, d’Artagnan hails his brother, who smiles lazily, lifts his cup.

“All set?”

“Just about,” he says, rubbing at his neck with his towel.

“We brought you this.”

“We?”

“It’s Porthos’s. But he’s deep in a game, so…”

“Ah.” A pause. “What is it?”

“Oh. Yes.” He digs in his breeches pocket and holds up a long, shallow box. “Shaving kit.”

He frowns. “You think I need to shave?”

“I think Constance will thank us.”

He rubs his chin, rueful. “I’m not very good at… I usually go to a barber’s for a close…”

“Behold! Tonight I am your barber, being half a surgeon.”

“You’re half-cut, you mean.”

Aramis grins. “Very droll, young monsieur; so sharp, I might say, that you’ll c-”

“I didn’t know you shaved yourself…”

He shrugs. “Often enough. And, unlike Porthos, I’ve shaved others. Come on, let’s have you.”

He’s never been shaved by a friend before, but is in the mood to trust, so lights a wall candle to supplement the remaining daylight, finds a beaten old chair to sit in nearby. He closes his eyes as Aramis, bare-headed, shirt-sleeves rolled, approaches with soap, the remnants of the water he’s just finished using to wash his face, and Porthos’s box of tricks. The sensation of soap is followed by gentle fingers stretching his skin, a surprisingly steady edge placed against his cheek, and the first assured scrape.

Aramis tilts his head back wordlessly to access the awkward bristles under his chin and he catches his breath, as he always does, as the blade reaches to the junction between jaw and throat. The only sound in the bathhouse is the steady scrape, scrape, wipe, scrape, scrape, wipe, and Aramis’s breathing. He stands close, one leg between d’Artagnan’s, the other braced alongside the chair, tilting his chin this way and that. D’Artagnan feels the man’s body heat against his bare skin, can smell the scents of wine, horse, and the many exertions of Aramis’s day, feels his breath on his face and neck from time to time.

He feels his own pulse more strongly for a moment, takes the opportunity of a wiping pause to take a deep breath, roll his neck and shoulders.

“Nearly done,” murmurs Aramis, through another couple of short scrapes. There’s a sound of rummaging, and d’Artagnan cracks his eyes in time to see Aramis holding something white and rounded. He settles back again, eyes closed, feels a strange, almost soft, rubbing, tugging sensation over his still-sensitive skin.

“What’s this?” he manages.

“Pumice stone,” comes the answer. “Helps get closer without risking cuts. Porthos swears by it.” A pause. “And I don’t want to risk… slipping tonight.”

“There’s a risk?” He keeps his voice as steady as he can.

“You may not have noticed, but I’m not entirely sober, and I don’t think it would be fair. You’ve been wounded enough today.”

“Do you,” he swallows, “often slip when you’re not sober?”

Another pause. “I try not to put myself in harm’s way in such circumstances, as it were.”

“Unless Porthos persuades you to let him shoot a melon off your head.”

A soft chuckle. “Apart from that.”

The rubbing stops, and Aramis’s fingers replace the stone. D’Artagnan finds his breath catching again. He runs them first down one side of his jaw, then the other, rubs a slow thumb down over his chin. “There,” he says. “Soft enough for any lady.”

“Thanks.”

“Come on then, young Gascon.” He takes his hand.

D’Artagnan grips it and surges upward, opening his eyes. Aramis does not give ground, just tilts his head this way and that to check his handiwork. D’Artagnan finds himself warming under such close scrutiny.

Aramis meets his eyes for a long moment, then steps back with a courtly bow, sweeping low.

“Thank you,” says d’Artagnan, exploring the result with a wondering hand.

Aramis straightens and smiles. It’s his usual smile - soft, honest, slightly ironic, and sparkling deep in his eyes. He moves to empty out the water and then back to stow the blades and stone away.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, eyes on his work.

“Smooth,” he chuckles.

Aramis straightens, starts to roll down his sleeves. “And how are you feeling?” he asks, unsmiling.

D’Artagnan blinks for a spell. “I hardly know,” he says. “Everything has changed so much, in less than a day. I feel… A lot of sensations, frankly, right now.”

“You have a chance at love,” says his comrade, quite gravely, “and love should never be passed up when it comes to us.”

“There are… complications.”

“There always are. As long as there’s no shame.”

“I. I don’t feel any.”

“That’s good.” He regards him steadily for a moment. “Then be honest, remain true, and let your loved ones know how you feel - any time you know what that is! - and all should be well.”

“I. Thank you.”

Aramis pockets the kit again, scoops his hat onto his head from the wall hook, touches it with a nod to d’Artagnan, slings his doublet over his shoulder, and strides out into the evening.

Wait. Hold on…

“Aramis?” He dives to the doorway, calls “Aramis!” but he’s nowhere to be seen.

He.

Did he just…?

Shaking his head, eyebrows high, he puts his shirt and doublet on, gathers his belongings, extinguishes the candle, and heads for the stables.

Inside, it is church-dim, the setting sun not directly reaching through the high windows. He lets his eyes adjust and heads for his horse’s stall, where he clicks and chirrups fondly at the beast, slapping its flank, puts soap and towel in the saddlebags, and looks at the other gear, still debating whether he is to ride or walk to the Palace. Further down the building there is a distinctly non-equine scuffing sound and a clink. Frowning, he reflexively lifts his sword and steps quietly into the centre of the aisle.

“Hello?” The scuff and clink again, this time followed by a rattle and a soft curse.

“Come out,” he says, pushing authority into his voice, “identify yourself.”

A figure sways from the far stall, the empty one. A shaggy head cocks sideways, and hands rise to his shoulders to show themselves empty.

“Ah,” he says, leaning his sword against the wall.

“‘Ah’, he says,” lowering his hands.

“Are you drunk?”

His mouth turns down and his head shakes slowly. “Not… yet…”

“You shouldn’t…” his shoulder hunches, against his volition.

“… be drinking? Debatable.” His voice is rough.

“‘Be alone’, I was going to say.”

“Ah.” He watches d’Artagnan, the drink not having robbed him of much, but making it easier for him to just rest his eyes there.

“Well,” he says, after a short while. “Don’t let me, ah, get in your way. You’re taking off, I see.”

D’Artagnan nods, hand moving slowly down his own cheek.

He focuses. “Fresh shirt, freshly-shaved. It’s a good look.”

“Thank you.”

“Congratulations.”

“I. Thank you.”

Athos starts to walk backwards slowly, spreads his hands wide. “I’d stay to chat, but I have wine calling me.”

“Athos, don’t.”

“Boy,” he says wearily, head drooping, “don’t you tell me wh…”

“Don’t call me,” a hard huff of breath, “boy.”

He stops, lifts his head to the side. “Does it matter? Really?”

“What?”

“Does-doesn’t matter.”

“Athos,” he says, sounding a little appalled, taking a step towards him.

“Oh, no…” he shakes his head, points at him. “No, you don’t.”

“Athos,” and his voice is louder now, beginning to feel the edges of actual anger. “Look. Look, just tell me what I did wrong, will you? Just.”

“What?”

“Because everything… everything was…” he grits his teeth, tries again on a deeper breath. “Amazing. Everything was so good and then. And then you…”

“What?”

He takes another step. “ _Why did you push me away?!_ ”

“Didn’t.”

“Yes. Yes, you did.” Another step. “You pushed me, cold and, and _angry_ , when all I wanted was to…”

“I’m no good for you.”

He frowns. The side of his mouth goes up. “What’s that?”

“I. I can’t do it. I’m,” he pounds on his chest, “ _broken_. I. I shouldn’t be with…”

“That’s nonsense. Self-pitying nonsense.”

“No,” he says slowly, “look at the facts.”

D’Artagnan’s face is weary, jaw set. “Sure…”

“You’re too stubborn to see this.”

“Right!” he flings back, eyes starting to blaze, “ _I_ ’m the stubborn one.”

“You know nothing!”

“I know _you!_ ”

“Really? Then tell me this: The only other person I’ve ever loved was a whore, a liar, a murderer, and a common thief, so why…”

“Say that again?” D’Artagnan sounds in shock.

“A whore,” he says slowly, over-enunciating, ‘public voice’ welling from his throat, “a liar…”

“No, the other thing.”

“I.”

“You.”

“Oh God. Have you only just realised?”

“I need to hear you say it.”

“You need to hear. You need. You want. You want so much from me, and”

“And I love you too!”

The silence rings. Athos’s breathing is heavy. His arms are crossed, his hands gripping his belt. “What,” he starts, clenches his jaw, breathes out hard through his nose. “What good does that do me?”

“But…”

“When I can’t have you. When. Oh God, man. _Why couldn’t you have left me alone?_ ”

“How could I?” cries d’Artagnan.

“How… What?!”

“The way I feel about you. The way,” he dry sobs, swallows, “the way I’ve felt about you for so long.”

“But you love her!”

“Yes, I do! But”

“So you don’t understand! I can let you go, but you have to let _me_ go. Not. Not like. Not this…”

“No, _you_ don’t understand, you stubborn, noble bastard - _I love you too!_ As well! At the _same fucking time!_ ”

“What are you saying?” whispers Athos.

“What do you _think_ I’m saying…?”

Athos stares at him, aghast. “I won’t be your _mistress_ ” he hisses, at last, and half-turns, hunched over, rocking into his pain.

“No, no! Not like… Oh, fuck! I’ve fucked it up. This wasn’t. Fuck!”

“I need a drink.” He wobbles around, still clutching himself.

“No you don’t.”

“You don’t get to tell me…”

“Yes!” D’Artagnan darts and circles him, ducks to bring his face into Athos’s shrinking eyeline “Yes, I do, because I know what you want. I’ve always known.”

Athos stares at him, face and body pinched and bitter. His breathing hitches.

“This,” says d’Artagnan. He lays his left hand on the side of Athos’s face. Athos straightens, tries to shake him off with savage twitches of his head. “This.” He lays his right hand on Athos’s chest.

“No.”

“Yes.” D’Artagnan will not be moved, and Athos raises his hand to push him away and.

And lays his right hand on his chest

And

And looks up to see d’Artagnan’s face.

And

And sees the first tear overflow his eye

And

And leans. And d’Artagnan leans. And they’re kissing, and anyone could come around that corner, and fuck them if they did. He’d fight them. He’d fight the whole fucking world.

And now he’s crying. Ugly sobs he presses to d’Artagnan’s neck. “Oh God, I’m so lost. Oh, God, forgive me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” And they’re sniffing and blubbering, each left hand tight around the back of the other’s neck, right hands each clenched on the other’s chest, forehead to forehead.

A throat clears. “Er, not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Fuck off, Porthos.”

“Fucking off.”

Footsteps. The door claps shut, and the only sound is their settling breathing and occasional sniff.

Athos is the first to break back, lifting his left hand off d’Artagnan’s neck and wiping his eyes with his sleeve. D’Artagnan swipes at his own with the base of his thumb, fishes in his pocket for a handkerchief and blows his nose.

They stare at each other for a wobbly while. Then Athos turns his right hand and takes d’Artagnan’s, without breaking eye contact, holding it to his own chest. He takes a series of deepening, slowing breaths, nods slightly several times, and says: “Yes.”

“Y-yes?”

“Yes. Yes, I. Mmmh.” Another breath. “I love you, d’Artagnan. I have done for what feels like a long time.”

D’Artagnan feels tears sting again. “Oh, God. Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Always.”


	7. Resurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reconciliation, negotiations.

They are sitting on the floor of the empty stall, backs to the partition, d’Artagnan’s left hand in Athos’s right, ever since he took it and towed him in here. They have said very little, but every so often d’Artagnan will lean his head sideways, as will Athos, and they’ll sit like that for a while, head to head, before straightening up again.

The bottle of wine sits between them. It is still half-full.

Eventually Athos stirs, takes a deep breath and says: “I like Constance. All those things I said to you before - clever, resourceful, loyal, all that - I meant it.”

D’Artagnan sighs like he’s waking up, turns to Athos, and says: “What are you saying?”

He blinks, still gazing straight ahead. “I’m not entirely sure, I confess.”

“When Constance broke with me…” he says, slowly, “I forgot all those things. I just saw her as a coward.” He pauses. Athos waits. “And I resented her. And Bonacieux.” Athos sees the anger welling in him. He squeezes his hand gently.

“But I think about all our adventures in the months between us defeating Mil-”

“It’s all right,” he says, softly.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Probably.

“Between rescuing her and her coming to the Palace, anyway, and I think how close we became in that time. And how…” A head-leaning pause. Athos closes his eyes and just breathes. “It, _we_ wouldn’t have happened.”

He turns his head to d’Artagnan at this. “Yes.” He turns away again. “Strangely, I can’t regret that.”

“No. I told you before.”

“What?”

“This was never a mistake.”

Athos squeezes his eyes shut, feels his lips lose traction for a moment, forces his stinging eyes open, looks around to d’Artagnan.

“I must be insane,” he whispers.

D’Artagnan shrugs. “Then we both are.”

He considers this for a moment. “I know what I was saying. Before.”

“Oh?”

Athos reaches and strokes his cheek with his free hand, smiles properly for the first time that evening. D’Artagnan thinks that he has never seen his face look so soft before, so… he wants to say unguarded, though that’s not quite right either.

“It’s this: she makes you happy. And. And I want you to be happy.”

Peaceful. Is it peaceful?

“And she’s not some vapid noble, or a someone only after you for your looks…”

Reconciled. He thinks maybe reconciled.

“And she’s not a coward. If it wasn’t for her courage, well, actually, I’d be dead, so…”

And he’s never known him to keep talking for so long.

“My love, are you actually listening to anything I’m saying?”

“Hmm? Um, yes. Also watching your, um, mouth.”

He can’t help it - a long, sideways smile blooms from him.

“You…”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Where was I…?”

“About to kiss me, I really hope. Athos?”

“Yes?”

“Never mind.”

They kiss, very gently, turned at the hips, hands still gripped, until d’Artagnan stops with a gasp and they stare at each other, profoundly lost.

“I…”

“You?”

“I was saying.”

“Yes. Please. Go on.”

Athos clears his throat. “Constance is good for you. I want good things for you.”

“You’re good for me too.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t know how this is going to work. I have no idea. But.” He takes a breath. “I can share you if… if that’s.”

“Athos,” he says, gently, wryly, “do you honestly think I’ve got a plan for any of this?”

“No. I make the plans.”

D’Artagnan’s eyes roll above a fond smile.

“But d’Artagnan,” he says, very seriously, “you’re going to have to be honest with her. Completely honest. She deserves to make a full choice.”

D’Artagnan looks abruptly terrified. Then he nods, resolute.

“It doesn’t have to be tonight, but it has to be soon. That’s the only fair thing for both of us.”

“Tonight…”

“Yes.”

“Athos.”

“Yes?”

“What time is it?”

His face freezes sympathetically. “Late.”

“It’s pretty dark.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, damn.”

“Yes.”

They scramble to their feet together. Athos gazes somewhat wildly at d’Artagnan, and, for all his calm, rational talk, cannot quite make himself let go of his hand.

“I,” says d’Artagnan.

“She’s waiting.”

“Yes.”

“You have to go.”

“I-I do. I’m.”

“If you say sorry, I’ll hurt you.”

“That’s… that’s fair.”

“Listen. I. I want you to go… have your…” his jaw muscles bulge for a moment, “your wedding night.”

“Oh God, Athos…”

“No.” He sniffs. Clears his throat. “No, this is important. You _need_ to do this. You _must_.” His eyes are brimming, but his smile, though watery, is genuine. “You can’t know. You. You have to do this. You’ll see.” He dashes impatiently at his eyes with his sleeve.

“And after.”

“Always.”

“Kiss me, please.”

“Of course.”

He helps him saddle the horse, hears him accelerate away, goes to souse his head with cold water, walking like an old man, then goes in search of his brothers.

This is not a night to be alone.

*  *  *

“You’re late,” she says, crisply, in the tones of a woman whose initial euphoria has been tempered over the course of several pacing hours. There is a chessboard set up near the window, and a candle burning on the table.

The servant who guided the King’s Messenger to Madame Bonacieux’s apartments with his urgent message has just smirked off with ten deniers for his trouble. Madame is standing in the doorway with her arms folded.

“I am. I’m so sorry.”

Her mouth folds to one side, she looks up and down the corridor reflexively and says: “come in,” pulling him by the arm.

“I’ve not been here before.”

“I should think not,” she says with humour peeking through the annoyance.

“It’s nice,” he says, easily.

She moves over to the dresser and lights another couple of candles. He looks around for somewhere to put his sword and dagger, settles on a chair. “When I first got here, I thought I’d drown in all the space.”

“And now?”

She shrugs. “I’ve got used to it. So,” she goes on, “what kept you?”

“People kept wanting to give me friendly advice.”

She frowns. “Were any of them Porthos?”

“I only took one of his pieces of advice.”

“And what was that?”

“It’s more something to show than tell.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Is that right…?”

He draws closer, reaches out to her, letting his hand wait until she puts hers in it. Almost unbidden, she smiles up at him at last.

“How are you faring, Constance?”

“Oh, it’s been quite the day,” and she pushes a comic tremble into her voice.

“Did anyone see to your wounds?”

“A bit of salve from Sofia. Um, she’s my, the Queen’s maidservant. The chief one.”

“Good.”

She lets the silence stretch a little.

“So…” she says, slowly “a rather full day…”

“Yes,” and his eyes are very warm, a smile and other things lurking in the depths of them.

“We saw an eclipse.”

“And you tried to sacrifice yourself. Several times.”

“As did you.”

“Only once, really,” he demurs.

“And I had a pistol held on me by a madman.”

“And you tried to shame him into giving up.”

“And… oh yes, and Milady rescued us all.”

“That was… unexpected.”

“She’s about to lose her rooms here.” She’ll hold on to them for as long as possible, she’s sure.

“Shame.”

“Ooh, and what else - yes, and we half-strangled a man together.”

“That’ll be one to tell the grandchildren…” He smiles.

“Quite an eventful day, really.”

“Indeed.”

“Tiring, frankly”

“Maybe…”

“Should probably call it a night,” she says, carelessly.

“Hmm.”

She smiles up at him, a quirk of sheer mischief. He looks thoughtful.

“There was one other thing of note…” he says.

“The King behaving like a toddler?”

“I said: of note.”

“Ah.”

“Anything coming to mind?” he prompts, tugging on her hand very lightly.

“Well, there was one thing…”

“Yes…?”

“Aramis got pushed through a window.”

“Hmm.”

“I give in.”

“Do you?”

Oh. Dangerous. And he watches her eyes darken.

“I also,” he says, abruptly earnest, “told you that I loved you.”

“Oh, d’Artagnan.”

“And you told me that you loved me, and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me.”

“It’s all true.”

“Dear God, Constance, let me kiss you.”

“Oh, please, yes!”

It starts softly, and only deepens slowly. She breaks off with an exclamation, reaches up and strokes his jaw.

“Smooth…”

“Do you like it?”

“Is this what I’m thanking Porthos for?”

“And Aramis.”

She raises an eyebrow, cocks her head when his face clouds a little, his eyes dodging hers.

She chases his gaze. “They impart any other advice?”

“Can we leave them back at the garrison for the moment?”

She grins. “Of course.”

“Where were we?” he murmurs.

“About here,” she says, equally softly, tilting her face to his.

This time, there’s a spark of something else tucked into their kisses. He draws her closer while she winds both her arms about his neck. She’d forgotten what it was to kiss someone a good half a foot taller, and rises on her tiptoes, braced by his gathering arm.

The spark is growing, fed by the tiny moans they’re both making, the texture of his tongue against hers.

Oh, God. She can feel that familiar heat building, draws her fingertips down his back, feels the vibrations of his heartfelt groan arrowing into her.

And. There’s something. Something else…

She pulls back a little, settles back on her heels. His mouth seeks hers for a few blind moments until he opens his eyes, looks down at her with a light, slanting smile.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I”

“Nothing?”

“I, it’s just. You.”

“Hmm?”

“You, your kisses.”

“Mmmh…” His head dips. She stays back. “They’re different.”

He pulls his head up, tilts it slightly, frowning a little. “Different bad, or…?”

“Just different. Harder, maybe. Hungrier.”

“Constance,” he says, a little reproachfully, “it has been a while. Nearly a year…”

“Yes,” she says. “Of course.” She pauses, head down a little, looks up. “D’Artagnan, has there been… anyone else?”

He tenses. “Why would you ask that?” he asks, slowly, eyes holding but head slightly turned from her.

“It’s just… if there’s some other woman pining for you…”

“No.”

“… I wouldn’t want to get in the way of…”

“Constance!” he says. “There’s been no woman between you and now,” and he’s almost laughing.

“What about that blonde one, the General’s daughter?”

“Lucie? We kissed. Once. In fact, I think you saw all of it.”

“Oh.”

“Constance…” He takes her by the shoulders. “I promise you on my life: I’ve known no other woman since you. Can you say the same?”

“Eh?” Blood rushes to her face.

“I mean: your husband…”

“Oh! Oh, Bonacieux!” she says in a rush. “Not… not for…” she calculates, “some… months, actually.”

“Well,” he says, “now that’s settled, can we get back to where we left off?”

Her chest opens, air rushes in. “Yes, please!”

This time the flames take mere moments to reignite. Soon they’re scrabbling at his doublet together, dumping it on the floor, and she’s taken him by the belt, drawing him towards the bed. His hands are busy on the knots of her bodice as he kisses her neck. God! That’s different! He never used his teeth like that before… _Oh, shut up, woman._ Shutting up.

His lips are so warm. Her head goes back with a groan, under which she hears tiny, hissed curses.

“Having trouble?” she smirks.

“Just… a moment…” he mutters.

She reaches behind herself, guides his hands to the large, central knot. “There.”

They both flash on the same memory at the same time, eyes meeting in a wild instant. He dives on her mouth, and when his tongue plunges into her she feels heat arrow to her quim, starts to rock, helpless and moaning, against his leg.

He makes a yelping groan; a sound somewhere between startlement and desire, pulls back a little until she takes his neck and blindly draws him back to crush her mouth.

She feels the knot give way at last, and a corner of her brain is impressed - she can barely stand, let alone… her fingers dive to his belt, swiftly unbuckles that and drops it to the floor, then moves to undo his points, as he works to loosen her stays.

They both jump at the knock on the door, and d’Artagnan growls.

“I must.”

“I know,” and his teeth are clenched, but he notices that she doesn’t motion for him to hide himself, and while he’d rather some Palace servant didn’t catch a glimpse of his half-undone, bulging breeches and flushed face, he can’t help but grin as she fusses briefly with the hair around her face and opens the door with as much hauteur as she can muster, all undone at the back.

“Yes?”

The servant is unperturbed. “A message from Her Majesty.”

“Oh?”


	8. Camera Obscura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What tongue will it be that can unfold so great a wonder?” - Leonardo da Vinci, on the Camera Obscura

_This is your job._

Yes, but I wish her timing had been better.

The servant is staring a little. She opens the door a little wider, stands straighter. “You have interrupted me in the middle of getting ready for bed,” she says, icily, then smiles politely. “Please let me know the Queen’s urgent message.”

The servant now looks a little uncomfortable, clears his throat. “Her Majesty grieves for your ill health,” his eyes dip over her briefly, continues: “in the wake of the awful events of this day, and bids you a swift recovery.”

_At past ten o’clock in the evening?!_

Oh…

“Is there anything else?”

“A note, Madame.”

She holds out her hand and receives a small piece of paper that is fresh, a little stiff, folded and tucked in one of three particular patterns that Anne has taught her, and sealed with her small, personal seal.

Her mind is racing with all these tiny clues, while she keeps her left foot wedged firmly behind the door. She peels the seal back gently and unfolds the paper. She reads it, smiles very softly, eyes closing for a moment.

A small cough. “Madame, is there an answer?”

She looks up, glowing for a moment, at him, says: “Please thank the Queen for her care and tell her… wait…”

“You wish me to tell the Queen to wait?”

She sighs, shortly. “I’m telling _you_ to wait.”

“My apologies.”

“Think nothing of it.”

She closes the door and he hears a couple of sounds he can make little of. The door opens again, and she presents him with a narrow piece of rolled paper, no seal.

“There. You thank the Queen for her care and give her this. Tell her that I hope to see her soon, when we are both recovered.”

He repeats back the message, she nods, and closes the door. On the way back to the Queen’s nearby apartments, he pauses by a wall candle and unrolls the paper strip to see what appears to his eyes like a series of slightly smeared letters and numbers. The servant is no chess enthusiast, so re-rolls the paper and hands it on to the Queen’s maidservant.

Nothing here to report to the Comte, he thinks, and heads back to his post.

Inside Constance’s rooms, d’Artagnan quirks an eyebrow and smiles. “May I move yet?”

“Eh?” 

“While you were writing, you said…”

“Are all Gascons as literal as you?” 

“I come from a race of pedants,” he shrugs.

She shakes her head, smiling as she approaches. “How did you fall into my life, d’Artagnan of the King’s Musketeers?”

He rolls his eyes in theatrical remembrance. “I’m inclined to blame the late Cardinal and Milady, myself.”

“Ugh, let’s leave _them_ outside this room to boot.”

“Agreed.” He catches her by the waist and pulls her close. “Now, where were we?”

“About _here_ ,” and she runs her fingers along the band of his breeches, begins to tug his shirt out a half-inch at a time. She hears his breath speed up. His fingers set to work on the back of her gown again, and she rocks her back and shoulders side-to-side to help him.

Shirt free at the front, she runs her hands around his ribs to pull the back out, noticing a quick, tiny flinch and hiss.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, looking up to his face.

“Just… just a bruise. I’ll live. You caught me a little by surprise.” He smiles. 

“Just a bruise?” 

“I had Aramis check it out - it’s fine.”

“Poor thing.” 

“Before you say anything - this in no way diminishes my energy, Madame.”

“I should hope not, Monsieur - I have great hopes of your stamina.”

His eyes flash at this, and he dives to her mouth. Her fingers clench into his back - this kiss is instantly deep, heat flashing through her. She pulls back, gasping, and pushes at the arms of her gown.

In an instant, he’s there, pulling gently at the sleeves. The garment puddles to the floor, leaving only shift, hose, shoes, and she steps out, kicks it to one side. He runs his hands down her now-bare arms and brings the  fingers of her left hand up to his mouth to kiss them.

Within seconds, operating on an instinct born of habit, she slips the tips of two into his mouth, immediately guilty, then astonished when he moans a little, sucks them gently. She sways, feels heat flush across her whole body. His tongue thrums rapidly on the tips of her fingers, lips firm as he draws more of her inside himself. Her head goes back with her own moan and he dives to enfold her waist with his left arm as his right thumb rubs lightly across her captured palm.

She rises on tiptoe to kiss him again, clasping damp fingers to the back of his neck. He pulls her closer yet, and she feels his hardness through their clothes, presses into it.

He responds by ducking, clasping her under the buttocks, and pulling her up, one-handed. She gasps at the strength of him, raises her thighs, trying to wrap herself around him, curses against his lips as her shift constrains her.

“Put me down,” she commands, gasping. “We’re both wearing far too much.”

He sets her down, then rips his shirt upwards while she dives to complete the undoing of his points. She starts to peel them off him, kissing down his warm, smooth torso as she does so.

He has gained extra muscle in the months between, and she lets her tongue ripple over the folds, feeling as well as hearing his groan as she reaches his belly. The breeches fall to the floor, and he sways to step out of them.

She looks down, looks up. “When did you take your boots and hose off?”

He grins a sly slant down at her. “While you were at the door.” He swallows, bites his lip. What thought’s come to him…?

The scent of his arousal is heady, and she desperately wants to taste it. She considers teasing him for a while longer, but can't.

Oh God.

Oh, _God_ , her mouth on him feels exquisite. So soft, so urgent, with tiny sounds of pleasure and arousal that go straight to his core. His breathing hitches brutally, and he has to hold himself hard not to thrust into her, gritting his teeth and gripping the post of the canopied bed with one hand, stroking her hair with the other.

 _Don’t compare, don’t compare, don’t, ah,_ fuck! _, ah, compare._

He bends, grips her by the shoulders and gently pulls her up, ducking backwards with his hips.

“We have to get you out of those,” he pants, then kneels swiftly to pull her shoes off. She braces herself, half-propped on the edge of the bed which has, he’s already noted, no footboard. Good. The shoes come off quickly, then he takes his time undoing the ties and peeling down her hose, hearing her breath grow heavy and uneven as his fingertips brush her thighs.

“Constance,” he says, thoughtfully.

“Y-yes?”

“You’re not wearing any underwear.” 

“Neither are you,” she responds, tartly.

“But…”

“So what are you going to do about it?” she demands.

“I see.” He rolls up the front of her shift, slowly, then follows with his tongue as it reaches above her left knee. She gasps and writhes a little. He can smell the intimate scent of her, and it's starting to shut down parts of his brain. His tongue curves into the taste of her near the top of her thigh and he moans at it, hears her echo him.

On up, thumb of his left hand rubbing against the top of her other thigh.

Oh, dear Jesus, she’s thinking. Please. _Please_.

He reaches the top, pauses. She whimpers.

“Constance…”

“Yes, _yes!_ ”

And he plunges, pressing his whole mouth to her, tongue diving and driving. She presses her hands to the top of his head, strokes down, flails, fingers catching at the air as sensation builds.

He feels her hips start to dance, grins, laps harder. Stupid to worry he’d forget how.

Her toes keep slipping. Stupid. Bed. Ah! Too. High! Oh! And then he seizes her feet, places them on his shoulders, and she falls back as he rises higher on his knees.

Now she can thrust back at his strokes, and delicious tension rises in her belly and quim, as he starts to devour her, moaning into her. Her hands go to her breasts, rolling and tweaking. His hands are at her tented thighs, supporting and stroking, and. Oh, oh _fuck!_

He feels the tremors start and speeds up and

Nearly. _Nearly_

She gives a great shout, thrusts against him, peaking. He grips her and keeps lapping, feeling her spasm and gush, tries to capture every delicious drop.

It chimes throughout her, a deep, clear note breaking every grip in every part of her, bones liquid, skin vapour.

“Constance? Are you all right?”

She is crying, soft and smiling, and she winds her arms around his concern, brings him down to rest on her belly.

“You really are, aren’t you?”

“Mmmh,” she agrees. “Mm-hmmm.”


	9. The Motion of the Heavens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celestial bodies dance.

He laughs softly, scrambles up beside her and hauls them both further up the bed.

“So strong,” she murmurs. “So… hmm…” her hum resonates low in her throat and she nearly does it again for the sheer, silly joy of it. She looks up, sees his warm, bright eyes in, oh, in that face and she reaches up to stroke and kiss it. He responds softly and it’s like melting all over again. But then she feels his tongue against her lips, opens her mouth wide and tastes herself, moaning into him as she does. She feels his hand tighten on her waist, feels herself start to sharpen again, heart racing, eyes clearing.

Her right leg tents and he runs his hand down it. She can feel him, warm and insistent against her left thigh and feels something like the most delicious panic at the thought of it inside her, hard and high.

He catches this thought somehow, maybe in her gasp, and shifts to run the back of his hand lightly down the inside of her thigh, stroking at the edge of her. She rocks up towards him, as his fingers circle closer, moaning, breaking back from his mouth to gasp, to see his eyes gleaming down at her, mischievous in the candlelight.

Oooh.

“D’Artagnan?”

“Yes, Constance?”

“Will you please help me out of this shift?”

“Certainly.”

It’s a small struggle, as neither of them want to break off contact from each other, and she’s half-reclining against him as they tug and chuckle, and she’s fairly sure it’s at least partially inside-out before it gets thrown to fall somewhere on the floor.

He lets his fingers rest against her entrance and kisses her again, pulls back to grin and, before she can wonder, he’s dived for her breast, covering the swell of her with kisses, spiralling his tongue up to catch her with lips and even - she hisses - teeth. He swaps to the other one and now pleasure is flooding down to her core. She catches and rolls her own between her fingers, revelling in the almost twin sensations and then, on a wicked impulse, reaches to pinch _his_ nipple gently. He tenses, moans, thrusts against her leg. She applies more pressure, fascinated at the desperate sounds she’s pulling from him.

Then she feels his fingers start to edge into her, loses concentration on him for a moment, pushes towards the pressure. He chuckles against her, pulls up enough to ask: “Do you want this, Constance?”

“Oh, dear God, _yes_.”

They both moan as first one then, when it’s clear how drenched she is, two fingers slide inside her. She pushes back towards him, and he hurriedly shifts his own leg, which has been covering one of hers, to give her more room to rock.

He watches her for a while, fascinated by the play of emotions and thoughts across her face, feels each moan and shudder strike somewhere deep inside himself. Her eyes open and catch his in an anguish of arousal, and he lowers his weight to cover half of her, kisses her, feeling himself swell and swell against her soft, rocking, desperate flesh.

She bucks hard, arcs, pulses around his fingers, and he feels strength leave him, flood out as she clasps him close with her arms, murmuring his name. But

Maybe he doesn’t understand - she’s not quite finished yet. That was the peak of the foothills; there’s more to come. She knows. She could… she _should_ show him.

“D’Artagnan, d’Artagnan…”

“I’m here,” he murmurs.

“I want… I want you…”

“I’m right here.”

She shakes her head in a welter of frustration, then smiles and slips her hand between them. He gasps, rocking immediately into her clutching palm. She turns on her side, pushes her right leg over his hip in a way that makes it difficult to keep his hand in place. He shifts it away and she makes a satisfied sound and adds a little pressure with her hand, feels him speed up with a tiny growl.

Then: “Wait, wait,” he gasps.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, slips her hand away.

“No!” Quieter: “No, not. Don’t a-ah-apologise…” He’s still rocking against her belly, but holds his breath for a couple of moments, lets it out gradually as he slows to a near-halt. “I just… I want…”

“D’Artagnan,” she says. “It’s, it’s all right - I want you to…”

“I just…”

“Oh, God damn it!” she exclaims, “Do I have to beg?”

He looks very confused, then comprehension dawns and he smiles, a little rueful. He turns his head away to look down, addresses her shoulder: “We never before, because…”

“I don’t care. I told you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“Oh, God, Constance.”

“I want to feel you inside me. I want all of it. And…” her breathing is ragged. So is his. “And if you need to wait, if, sorry, sorry, if you’re not ready, um. Oh.”

His head comes up. “Oh, no, love, I’m… I’m very ready, I-I just thought.”

“Please, please, d’Artagnan.”

“Oh, God,” he says. He looks down her, very seriously. “You’re sure?”

She bites back three sarcastic replies, reaches up to cup his face, and says, just as seriously: “Yes.” Pause. “ _Always_.”

His face crumples and, for a second, she thinks he’s going to weep.

Instead, he raises himself on his hands either side of her, levers himself over her leg, leaving a trail of his arousal. His head is down, tips of his hair trailing deliciously over her breasts. She hurriedly raises her leg then, because she can’t resist, she scoops some of what he’s left on her thigh with the side of her hand, brings it to her mouth to taste. He looks up at her satisfied moan, gasps when he works it out, teeth clenching as she works her tongue up the side of her hand and little finger.

He looks back down, lowers himself slowly, bending his arms, and she feels him brush against her entrance. She raises her hips to help him and he slips up the cleft of her to rub on her nub. They both gasp, hiss, grit their teeth even at that much contact, and slide for a few strokes, her fingers hooked around his neck, groaning a little.

He looks up at her again, that same species of panic that she’d felt at the thought of this reflected in his eyes, lifts one hand to himself and pushes down until he’s notched in her. Panting, she nods at him.

He pushes forward with his hips slowly, savouring every moment. She feels… incredible. Warm, soft, and _drenched_. He grits his teeth anew as he passes through the tightest part of her, hears her groan, feels her push back, engulf him. She is rippling and pulsing and he holds himself very still, lowers his head to her breast, takes it between his lips, hears her gasp and start to rock against him. He can no longer resist…

He feels every bit as good inside her as she’d imagined, and then he begins to move and, almost against her volition, within moments, she climaxes again, a small, “foothill” one, but loses rhythm for a moment, then returns to herself, starts to grind her hips hard against him, and he releases his mouth’s grip on her breast to grit his teeth and groan.

“Oh, dear God,” she moans.

“Oh, God, Constance,” and his breath is coming hard, and she wonders if he can last much longer, then that mischievous quirk that she loves so much comes over his face, and he slips one hand under her back, sliding it up to lift her. “Ready?”

“Wh-” and he rolls over onto his back, taking her with him.

He smiles up at her. “Now,” he says, panting, “up.” She frowns at him, confused. “Oh,” he says, his voice somewhere between a groan and a chuckle, “you’re… ah… going to… like this. _Sit up_.”

Puzzled, she straightens and… oh. Oh, God, so deep. “God, God, _fuck!_ ” and her hips begin to rock hard, grinding against him.

“Oh, fuck, _yes!_ ” he cries, and thrusts up into her, fast and hard, one hand on her breast, the other tugging her onto him. “I’m, I, oh, oh _fuck!_ ”

“Yes!” she cries. And, impossibly, he’s harder, faster, swollen to fill her utterly, and she, oh, oh fuck, oh, puts her weight on one hand on the centre of his chest so she can bear down and something in his face changes and

And dear Christ

Jesu, fucking… Jesu, yes.

As she grips him, her head going back as a wave of sensation crashes over her, he spasms, hard, arcing into her, crying out and collapsing.

Somehow she slips off him, lies, boneless and twitching, one hand still on his chest, his in her hair, muttering nonsense. She suspects he’s crying a little, but she can’t, she’s… eyes… I, closing… sleep. I.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”


	10. Illumination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here be dragons.

She sat with her chin in her hand, gazing out into the night. The earlier rain had cleared and now the sky opened out, beckoning her into its depths.

She had learned - or been taught - so many things over the years: languages, courtesies, manners, mathematics, as well as all sorts of games and noble pastimes suitable for her sex (and now a little astronomy, she thought, wryly). But, more importantly, in this past year, she had finally learned what it truly meant to love, not as a child, but as a woman grown.

Every day she thanked God for sending Constance to her. And even if she lost her completely, she would continue to thank Him for this door that had opened onto warmth and joy.

And then there was the other. A memory unfolded only at moments like this, completely alone, when she could look into the eyes of a night that brimmed with valour, and despair, and the terrifying wonder of abandoning all caution. A night of caress, and yes, and the glorious, muscular tangle of desire and will.

And this had given her the other gift - the impossible child, the one strong enough to survive her body, the “marvel when it was least expected”, as the Gazette had put it.

She shook her head a little, smiling now, looked down at the board by her hand where Constance’s message was spelled out for those with the wit to see it.

She frowned, took the small scroll of paper and tore off a small piece, which she folded until it became something she could balance on top of the Queen’s Pawn like a rakish, miniature coronet.

“There,” she whispered. “That’s better.”

*  *  *

He lay on his back, still fully dressed, eyes open, fixed on the dark canopy above him, his mind on marriages.

It will be glorious.

He could feel everything turning into place, and, what’s more, no matter what they did, The Musketeers would help him.

Delicious.

And then, thereafter:

“She will be mine.”

He undid his breeches slowly, deliberately. There is so much time in front of them. He reached beneath the pillow and put on the silk gloves, his eyes closing in a long blink.

He was already hard. She would stroke his belly, shy, like this, mmh, but then her natural desire would overtake her, and her hand…

Mmmmh. Tender at first, but then in the grip of passion.

Ahh.

Passion stalled for long… y-years. W-waiting.

Oh!

Patient!

Uh!

And he will tell her that he loves her, over and over again.

Ohhh, God, Anne.

Yes.

“You. You. You _will_ be mine!”

_Mine._

*  *  *

The King turns at the top of the stairs. There is someone behind him, he can sense it. Nothing.

He turns to the stairs again.

There! A sound. A certain, unmistakable step behind him.

He strains to see, to penetrate the gloom. He is the Sun, after all.

It. It sounds like a laugh. Yes, a low chuckle.

“Who. Who’s there?” he quavers.

“Nobody!” comes the harsh whisper, and the feel of a pair of thrusting hands, and he turns again, a helpless tumble

And turned in his bed, sheets tangled, clammy. He reached for. But no, not there - betrayed at every turn.

“Rochefort,” he whispered, arms around his knees. “Rochefort will keep me safe.”

*  *  *

Jaw clenched, she dealt herself a hand of cards by the light of a candle. God knows he could afford the expense, the cheap, cheap bastard.

She was willing to bet - though not very heavily - that they wouldn’t remember to clear her out for at least a week. The question was: should she wait to see if the King forgot his angry vow; try to actively inveigle her way back into his favours; or take off with as much as she could decently carry from the place? Again.

It was rare for her to feel so much indecision. Usually it was: opportunity; take; talk, kill, or fuck her way in or out of any subsequent situation (with a variety of other options along these themes available).

Always be alert to opportunities and options. Trust your feet, hands, mouth, wits, and quim.

She knew what was going on, of course. She’d turned aside from her own nature, and look where it had got her.

_You have my respect._

“Fuck your respect!” she snarled aloud, throwing the hand to the table. The King of Clubs and the Queen of Hearts stared up at her, doe eyes sly in the candlelight.

She swept the cards off the table and started making lists in her head, chin resting on her fist.

*  *  *

He leaned his head back and looked at the stars. The flambeau on the wall had just guttered out and his vision was purer for it. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then out.

His head was spinning pleasantly. He hadn’t been this drunk in… he tried to calculate… a while, his mind on, er, other things. And, and it’s not good to brood.

Brandy. That’s it. Not the vicious stuff that you could use for, for, for other stuff, like fires and things, but nice. Nice brandy.

The man knows his brandy.

I suppose that makes sense.

Ah. Here he is now. And this, this one knows about lost love too, doesn’t he? Comfort. Comfort me. Him.

Nope.

Dangerous.

“You all right, my friend?”

“Yes, old chap.”

He settled in next to him against the wall, a warm shoulder and flank, the scent of… a fellow soldier. Unmistakable, really - horses, of courses, and sweat, and leather, and metal, and gunpowder.

We all of us smell a little of death.

Of course, right now we smell a lot of wine. And brandy.

Tell him. Go on.

Shhh.

“Shall we go home?”

“Um.”

A soft chuckle answered him. “Whenever you’re ready. No rush.”

“You’re not so drunk as, um, as I. Me. Not. Hmm.” He tried again. “Sober.”

“No,” said the other, a smile in his voice, “but steadier than you, that’s for certain.”

“Heh. Oh. Where’s Porthos?”

“About to either sweep the board or possibly start running. Could go either way.”

“Ah. Like me.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Tell him.

“While we’re, we’re, while we’re waiting, shall I tell you a story?”

“Why not?” His shoulders crunched side-to-side on the wall as though grounding himself in it, and he dimly saw his leg cock up behind him.

“You resting comfortably?”

“Relatively.”

He sniffed hard, swallowed, said: “Do you have anything to drink on you, by any chance?”

“Er,” a rustle, “only water, I’m afraid.”

“Really?!”

“Yes.”

“Really water?”

“Really.”

“Well, pass it over, then.”

The sound of something unclipping, and a canteen slipped into his hands.

“Thanks.” He took two big mouthfuls, swilling his mouth on the first, feeling

“Better?” said the other, receiving his canteen back.

He sniffed again, shook his head. “Much. Where was I?”

“You were going to tell me a story.”

“Oh? Oh! Oh, yes. Right.” he cleared his throat, heard his voice modulate as he said: “Have you ever heard the tale of Galehaut?”

“Galehaut? Like Galahad?”

“No, but close. He was a friend of Lancelot. His _best_ friend.”

“So this isn’t a true story…”

“If may not be _factual_ ,” he said, “but truth is a whole different matter.”

“I see. Go on.”

“A long time ago, in the Isles of the Blessed”

“England?”

“ _Britain_ , or Labion. Albion. There lived a great king you’ve heard tell of.”

“Arthur.”

“The Once and Future King as the Bretons like to say. Yes, and since you’ve heard of him, you will have heard of Merlin, his maker, and Guinevere, his wife, the most beautiful woman in the land, with cornflower blue eyes and pale skin, and the most…”

“And?”

“Sorry, and Lancelot, his best friend, and best knight.”

“The one who loved Guinevere.”

“And she loved him back, don’t forget that.”

“No. Well.”

“And in the early days of Arthur’s reign there came to him a young man, barely more than a boy, Lancelot of the Lake, and no-one truly knew, even him, where he’d come from, only where he was going, and that was to be the best, the truest knight in all the land.”

“And he succeeded.”

“Yes, but for a long time he was in love with the King, with his vision of a better Britain, and the better knight he would be, the best, and Guinevere was, at first, a part of that, and then became someone he knew for herself and her for him, friends that fell to being lovers.”

“I see.”

“But you don’t know about Galehaut.”

“No.”

“It was in the early days of Arthur’s reign, and he was busy fending everyone off, and stamping the borders of his reclaimed country free from Saxons and Angles and Vikings and Goths, and and no doubt remnants of the old Romans, and anyone who wanted to come and take a piece of the land, and saying…”

“Thou shalt not pass!”

“Yes. Yes. Where was I?”

“Galehaut.”

“Oh, yes, so Arthur’s fighting everyone, and though his reputation and his army are growing, his forces are small, and still untried, and occasionally still fighting with each other as each new tribe is added to its numbers, and their love for the King and his vision is great, but not so great as Lancelot’s, and often it’s him that carries the day, as he does against Galehaut.”

“Hold on - I thought Galehaut was his friend.”

“Shhh. Wait. All right. Well, Galehaut is the King of the Distant Lands.”

“Romania?”

“No.”

“Lithuania?”

“No, look…”

“The New World?”

“Are you listening to this story or not?”

“My apologies.”

“Hmm.”

“Please, go on. I am listening.”

“No-one seems to know where the Distant Lands are, maybe Ultima Thule or even the New World. Or just Ireland or something. _Anyway_ , Galehaut is determined to stamp on this new little King who would be the High King of Albion, only he has a look at their army and thinks: ‘That’s pathetic. There’s no honour is defeating such a tiny army!’ So he sends them home to get their act together, to meet again in a year. But the thing is, he wouldn’t even have bothered if it wasn’t for the Red Knight.”

“The Red Knight?”

“The Red Knight has held off everyone who’s come at him, and Galehaut thinks there’s hope for any army that can field him.”

A pause.

“So? What happened next?”

“Oh, sorry. So, the next year they come and their forces are pretty mighty, by comparison with previously, but it’s in the Black Knight that their true might and impressiveness lies.”

“Black? I thought you said…”

“Different armour, same chap.”

“Right.”

“The Black Knight puts heart into the others, and the bravest and boldest of Arthur’s knights gather to his standard - those ones whose names everyone knows, like Gawain and… and the others. Anyway, when he’s unhorsed, The Black Knight, surrounded by piles of his enemies, Galehaut sends him horses and instructs his armies not to attack him when he’s on foot, or to capture him unless he leaves the field. He thinks: no kingdom, however fair, is worth the death of such a knight. He’s… He’s _smitten_ , you see.”

“Ah.”

“He even invites him to his tent to tell him all this. And Lancelot, looking at him, thinks that this is a King who he could follow, quite as ardently as he follows Arthur, maybe even more so.”

“Right…”

“Anyway, they end up having words, and later Lancelot leaves the field in the company of Galehaut, and comes to his camp again, and Galehaut gives him a sumptuous place to lay down, but later, when Lancelot’s asleep, he comes to lie down next to him.”

“Hmm.”

“And he hears the young man groaning in his sleep, and perceives that, despite his beauty and prowess and all that, he’s sad. But he leaves him be, and promises him anything that he should desire in the morning. And Lancelot asks for his unconditional surrender to Arthur! Which he gives him. He would give him anything, to keep him happy, you see.”

“I see.”

“And through all the negotiations and the praises given to God for the victory, Galehaut, perceptive fellow, works out that Lancelot’s sadness is for his lack of Guinevere, and goes to the court of Arthur to ask what they would give to have such a knight - they still don’t know that The Black Knight is Lancelot, given his armour by the beautiful and cunning Blaye, the Lady of Malehaut.”

“What’s this?” the other asked sharply.

“A side-bar. Anyway, he asks: what would you give? And the King says: ‘Half of all I own, saving my Queen, of course!’ and Gawain, says, assuming that he recovers from his extremely grievous wounds, that he’d transform himself into a beautiful woman to keep the Black Knight by him.”

“Really?”

“Truly.” He shrugged. “The Ancients, eh?”

“Well. Anyway, go on.”

“So he asks Guinevere, and she quips that, Gawain having offered all a lady could give, a lady can do no more! ‘But seriously,’ says Galehaut, and she says that, for love of the Black Knight, she would let her very honor turn to shame.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed. And then it gets complicated.”

“You don’t say.”

“Because Galehaut arranges things so that the Lady Guinevere not only gives the young Lancelot her time and a promise of her ardor, but acts as a go-between, inflaming them each with the love of each other in the tension of the delay of them coming together. And, even when the first, er, _exchange_ is done, she apologises to the King of the Distant Lands for taking the love of his beloved Lancelot.”

“I see.”

“And then there’s a complicated part about the Lady Blaye, who’s worked out what is happening, eyes and ears everywhere that one, sharing Guinevere’s bed, but that’s… anyway, that’s that bit.”

“Right.”

“Yes.”

“And he loves him. This Galehaut.” His comrade’s voice is thoughtful.

“They love _each other_ , my friend. And they’re willing to sacrifice so much to each other’s happiness.”

“And Lancelot had Guinevere’s love…”

“For many years. And she had his.”

“And Galehaut?”

“The same. Well, not _exactly_ the same, but it almost seems like they spent more time together than Guinevere and Lancelot. And Galehaut was forever facilitating their affair as well, sometimes in collaboration with Lady, um, her. Melancholy chap, too.”

“Hmm.”

“And very influential. Everyone keeps asking him for advice.”

“You don’t say.”

“Maybe I should write an epic poem.”

The other let out the smallest of groans. “Maybe… later…”

“Yes, maybe.”

“Hey!” said Porthos, approaching them with that distinctive, bowling stride. “You’re still here!”

“Of course,” said his companion, easing himself off the wall.

“What you been up to?”

“Aramis has been telling tall tales.”

“God, has he been singing?”

“Not yet.”

Porthos made a _really?_ face as he got closer.

“True story!” blurted Aramis.

“But not necessarily factual, apparently,” said Athos.

“Eh?”

“Never mind. How was your game?”

Porthos grins. “Beat him squarely in the end.”

“But not fairly?”

“Truthfully but not factually, you might say,” he smirked as he passed.

“Why do I get the impression that we need to get up to speed?”

“Way ahead of you,” echoed Porthos’s voice from the street.

He groaned as Athos seized him by the forearm, but gripped his in return, pulled himself upright, and nearly onto the other’s chest.

“Steady,” said his brother, quietly.

He patted his shoulder. “As a rock.” He looked up into his face. “Shall we?”

That small, slanted, familiar smile. “Let’s.”

Leaving shouts in their wake, they accelerated away.

*  *  *

Groaning a little, squinting a lot, they gather on the morning-bright yard.

“How’re you doing?” asks Athos.

Porthos frowns towards him, head a little wobbly on his neck. “Yeah,” he says. “All right.” He peers away at the previous night. “I won?”

“And escaped.”

“That too.” He grins. “Yeah.” He taps his pocket, which chinks merrily. “Yeah.”

“Aramis?”

A swaying silence. The poet has his hat pulled low over his eyes, which appear to be closed. The others nod at each other, Porthos signals _three, two, one_ and they clap him on each shoulder simultaneously.

“Fzjgsh!”

“Exactly!” says Porthos, apparently over-loudly for Aramis’s current tastes. He tugs his hat down harder, his whole body a wince.

Porthos catches his neck in the crook of his arm. “Is someone hungover, eh? Is the mighty stallion laid low? Eh?!”

“Bugger off,” he mumbles.

“That’s no way to talk to a brother!”

“Ugh!”

“Such eloquence,” he all-but roars, shaking him lightly.

“Easy,” says Athos, quietly.

“Eh?”

Athos flicks his eyebrows towards Treville, who’s approaching, as fresh as the man ever looks. “Sir,” he says.

“Enough of that. Where’s d’Artagnan?”

“Er,” says Porthos.

“Oh,” says Aramis.

“We can pass the message on,” says Athos, neutrally enough.

“No,” says Treville crisply. “We need all of you here. Firstly:” forestalling interrogation with an upraised finger, “for a debrief on yesterday.”

“Ugh,” says Aramis again.

“ _And secondly_ : we need to make a plan for escorting Princess Louise of Mantua to Paris from the border with Italy. Every opportunity we have to demonstrate the efficacy of the King’s Musketeers is vital right now. I _know_ that none of you want the disbanding of this garrison to be something that happened on _your_ watch.”

The others are silent, sober, watching him. Aramis has managed to pull his face into a form of alertness.

“So where is he?”

“Most likely at the Palace,” says Athos.

“Then fetch him. Double-quick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop that. You have an hour.” And he strides off.

They gaze at each other.

“I’ll go,” says Athos, after a moment.

Porthos frowns at him. “You sure?”

Athos shrugs. “You need to sober our bard up. I suggest cold water.”

Aramis calls something incomprehensible after him as Porthos, chortling, drags him towards the bathhouse and he strides to the stables.

On the way over, his inner voice stays silent, as it had all last night, and he assumes it content for now.

And it really is a lovely day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, many thanks to the people who read, commented, gave kudos, all that lovely stuff (especially [theredwagon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredwagon), [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig), and [Hsg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hsg)). You’ve really kept me going with this.
> 
> There are two more planned instalments of this series to go, and I’ve already mapped out _A Beautiful Dream_ and the tentatively titled _Nevertheless_ , so I just have to write them. One-shots or other shorts may follow for this universe, and I’m looking forward to just being able to watch the show without pausing to make notes about clothing, eye colour, facial expressions, etc. At some point I’ll even get around to finishing Season Two and watching Season Three!
> 
> The legend towards the end is one I only just discovered yesterday, and I loved it so much, for hopefully obvious reasons of sheer synchronicity, if nothing else, that I had to share Aramis’s take on it. You can blame Thimblerig for introducing me to [The Decameron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron), and thence the gorgeous, incredibly homoerotic Mediaeval French tale of [Galehaut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galehaut), King of the Distant Lands and his _very close_ relationship with Lancelot. I got most of my information about the story from Wikipedia and the lovely, loving translation made by by Patricia Terry and Samuel N. Rosenberg, available [here](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BIPOJU8/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1) on Amazon.
> 
> Love, as ever, to you all, and the broader Musketeers Fandom (not to mention the writers, actors, prop-makers, and costumiers of the show, who will obviously never, ever see this). Sweet and naughty dreams to you all.


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